Saturday, March 8, 2008

Masters of Doom: Armadillo's roots...

Masters of Doom...

Wow! I finished reading this book by David Kushner a few weeks ago and really meant to get a posting up. It alls ties together for me. Teaching myself computer programming, experimenting with my own rocket engines as a kid, and now having a renewed interest in rocketry myself.

This book brought back many memories from the past. Back to my first kit computer, a Timex-Sinclair ZX81, my Commodore 64 and a luggable IBM PC with little amber screen. I actually carried that thing around with me to class at the University of Arizona...

I started programming games on the TRS 80's and later IBM PC's at Sabio Junior High School. I taught myself BASIC on the ZX81 at home. Later, I fell in love with the Commodore 64. It's added color, resolution and sprites made for much more interesting graphical games.

I wrote some pretty good games, but never sent them off for publishing. Don't we all wish we could go back a change a few things...

I only dreamed of what Carmack and Romero actually did with their games...

Last year at the X Prize Cup Lunar Lander Challenge at Holloman AFB in New Mexico, we actually got to meet John Carmack and watch the flights of the Mod rockets in the competition. We drove over there to see his team complete, visit White Sands and the Space Museum. (Our hotel up in the mountains was even haunted... Very cool.) I will post another entry with pictures from the trip...


Carmack signing the group shot of the Armadillo team that we brought with us.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

UA teams up to shoot for Moon!


This is great news for Tucson!

"The UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Department have teamed with Raytheon Missile Systems and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to design, build, fly and operate a robotic lunar lander mission.

The team, called Astrobotic Technology Inc., is competing with nine other groups for the the Google Lunar X Prize, which offers a $30 million purse for the first private robotic mission to the moon that meets operational specifications."

Read the full article at: http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/frontpage/78677.php