john carmack이 만든 armadillo 로켓사 정리?

2013년 뉴스이지만....

quake 시리즈를 개발해 엄청난 돈을 번 게임계의 대부 john carmack은 상업 우주비행을 위해 개인 자금을 투자해서 2008년에 만든 armadillo aerospace사가 동면 모드로 들어갔다고.

결국 사업을 접을 가능성이 커지는데...

재사용 가능한 상업용 화물 우주선을 만들어  NASA를 상대로 장사하겠다는 계획이었는데 자금 회수 가능성이 거의 없어 정리단계인듯.

흥미로운 것은 게임 개발과 로켓 개발을 병행했던 carmack의 정리 이유인데, 소프트웨어 엔지니어였던 그의 입장에서 사전 검토와 계획 수립에 너무 많은 시간을 잡아먹는 로켓 개발 방식이 도무지 이해가 되지 않았나보다.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/2/4583304/john-carmack-armadillo-aerospace-in-hibernation-after-progress-stalled

John Carmack's private space program 'in hibernation' after progress stalled

By Adi Robertson on August 2, 2013 03:55 pm Email @thedextriarchy 29Comments

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Armadillo Aerospace, the private rocket-building enterprise founded by gaming godfather John Carmack, is being put on hold. At QuakeCon, Carmack told New Space Journal that in the face of a failed landing in January and growing organizational problems, "things are turned down to sort of a hibernation mode." Armadillo, the Journal reports, had hit a snag after giving up private contract work to chase a reusable cargo craft of the kind used by NASA. That meant that instead of operating at a profit, Carmack paid over a million dollars a year to finance the company and narrowed its focus to producing working suborbital rockets with existing technology.

"What happened was disappointing," he said. "What should have been faster — the repackaging of everything — turned out slower." He blamed the issue partly on his giving up a certain amount of day-to-day control and partly on a culture of "creeping professionalism" that delayed development. Instead of prototyping and testing quickly, Carmack said teams were spending more time on reviews or plans that did more to reassure potential buyers than get results. By focusing on one line of rockets, a single failure also became much more risky than if they'd had backup designs to turn to.

Armadillo was never on the scale of a company like SpaceX, but it's been around for over a decade with a combination of volunteer and full-time employees. Now, Carmack doesn't seem optimistic about ambitious projects in the near future. "I've basically expended my crazy money on Armadillo, so I don't expect to see any rockets in the real near future unless we do wind up raising some investment money on it," he said.