Carmack's lunar lander blows up (we feel guilty)

by Christopher Grant { Oct 31st 2007 at 11:50AM }

We know we can't blame ourselves. We won't lie: it hurt when id Software's John Carmack seemingly left the gaming scene to dabble in rocket science. Sure, there was DOOM RPG and Orcs & Elves, but we knew all along he was capable of so much more. Then along comes Carmack's QuakeCon '07 keynote and in it, news of Rage (their first id Tech 5-engine game), Quake Zero, Quake Arena for XBLA, another Wolfenstein game, and the id catalog hopping onto Steam. Yeah, that's a lot to heap onto anyone's plate ... especially an amatuer rocket scientist's Cape Canaveral collector's edition plate.

Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace made an attempt on Sunday to cash in on this year's X Prize Cup by having their Lunar Lander hop from launch and landing pads, simulating a real lunar landing. Unfortunately, even after two successful runs, the craft's engine exploded shortly after ignition on what would be their final attempt. Carmack said, simply, "Today is officially a bad day when it comes to our vehicle." True enough, John. We just hope you didn't feel too distracted by all the wonderful treats brewing at your other job as a game designer 'cause then, we'd feel really guilty.

[Via Eurogamer]

Tags: Armadillo-Aerospace, id, JohnCarmack

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

rockintom @ Oct 31st 2007 11:53AM

That sucks :(

LAST!

gonk @ Oct 31st 2007 11:59AM

pricey

OrganicShadow @ Oct 31st 2007 12:04PM

Maybe if he had a CELL chip installed in there somewhere... *lameattemptatzinger*

In other news: Gabe Newell's attempt at recreating Half-Life 2's "Dog" in his garage has resulted in the death of 4 small children.

F. Rocker or Fernando R.? @ Oct 31st 2007 12:22PM

lol =P

Clack @ Oct 31st 2007 12:41PM

I happened to be on the scene when the sad news reached founder of the Playstation brand, Ken Katagari. KKK had this to say:

"Aaaaah! If only he had had an array of Cell processors, he could have warped reality to fold dimensions and simply caused his space vessel to disappear from the launch pad and reappear instantaneously at its landing point! Or he could have realigned his Cell processor grid to emulate one of these 'portal guns' I keep hearing so much about, and simply portaled the moon itself beneath his spacecraft, eliminating the need for the silly competition in the first place!"

At this point Ken went cross-eyed and babbled incomprehensively for a few minutes before returning to tugging at his rapidly disappearing hair with one hand whilst enjoying his goats blood soup with the other.

rockintom @ Oct 31st 2007 1:05PM

...Too much.

OrganicShadow @ Oct 31st 2007 1:09PM

BTW that was actually a jab at the PC devs bashing PS3 as of lately... ;)

Was going to try to throw in some Mark Rein action too, seeing as he's been curiously positive on PS3 lately, but I got nuthin.

Sean @ Oct 31st 2007 12:08PM

He's lucky it wasn't possessed by Satan.

samfish (MSDF- Nurse Outfit!) @ Oct 31st 2007 1:14PM

Fuckin' aliens. First they sabotage Apollo 13, then the Mars landers and now they aren't even letting us get off our own planet!

BASTARDS!

David @ Oct 31st 2007 1:21PM

I think the latest mars lander is doing fine! Our Mars rovers also exceeded all expectations and continue to operate. Awesome.

Anyway, this contest seems rather unfair to call a "lunar lander" contest, because we have 6 times the gravity on the surface of earth than the moon! That would make it way more difficult!