Armadillo Aerospace Flight Paves Way For Science Payloads

Matt_dk writes "Armadillo Aerospace conducted two groundbreaking atmospheric test flights this weekend with their 'Mod' vertical-takeoff-vertical-landing rocket, a vehicle familiar to anyone who has followed NASA's Lunar Lander Challenge competitions. Flying from their test facility in Caddo Mills, Texas, Armadillo Aerospace first completed a milestone flight under a NASA contract, using methane fuel and liquid oxygen as propellant. Later that same afternoon, a second successful low-altitude flight was performed using a 'boosted hop' trajectory of the same type that will be used for suborbital flights to space."

Story lacks all detail

[EsJay]

How high? How far? What is a "boosted hop"? What is "closed loop throttle control"?

Light on the details

[sbeckstead]

There doesn't seem to be any type of accomplishment here except ~three or four paragraphs of an article about something that flies flying straight up and down then getting boosted by a hop while closing a control loop in microgravity?
There are details lacking to those that have no idea what Armadillo Aerospace builds and/or why?

How??

[greywire]

Can somebody explain to me how the hell they are going to pull this off?

I mean, its hard enough just to get enough fuel into a rocket to just barely get it and a small (relatively speaking) payload into space or orbit and then just fall back to earth without burning up.

And they want to do it and still have enough fuel left for a controlled, powered vertical landing?

While I think its an awesome idea that potentially avoids the dangerous re-entry issues of all previous and existing technologies (remember that the last space shuttle accident was because of a few damaged heat tiles!) and solves the re-usability problem, making for a possibly very economical vehicle, I just dont see how they are going to pack that much fuel into it.

Short of nuclear rockets, or things that make use of the air (either by flying up and/or using the atmosphere for the oxidizer instead of having it onboard), or some other new kind of amazing fuel, it doesnt seem possible.

Rockets and other vehicles meant to go into space face all sorts of structural issues and guidance problems and such, but ultimately the real problem is that of the energy required to get something up there in an efficient way. Thats why you have airplanes that fly up as high as they can before going into rocket mode, or space elevators, etc.

I am sure making a rocket go up and then come down without smashing itself or blowing up is incredibly hard, but that seems like a problem that doesnt need to be solved until we have some better fuel to put in it.

Am I missing something?