What do you get when you cross a circus with a space shot? That breed of alien hybrid would probably look very much like the Wirefly X Prize Cup, gearing up at the Las Cruces International Airport in New Mexico. Rockets are going up ... and sometimes crashing down. And then there's the big event in the center ring, the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.
We've covered Armadillo's ups and downs in today's main wrap-up. But there were plenty of other shows going on at today's three-ring circus. In fact, at the very moment that Armadillo was preparing to start its attempt, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was taking the wraps off the prototype for Rocket Racing League's Thunderhawk rocket-powered plane - and millionaire space passenger Anousheh Ansari was recapping her recent visit to the international space station on the Jumbotron screen.
I may not have heard every word Ansari was saying, because my ears were still ringing from the Rocketman's jet-pack flight - a quick round-the-runway spin with lots of sound and fury, using a 165-pound rocket engine that's strapped to the back.
Dan Schlund, the man wearing the rocket, rose perhaps 30 feet (9 meters) in the air. Afterward, he described the ride as "squirrely" at times.
"It's like standing on a basketball with two firehoses and trying to keep your balance," he said.
Schlund had a far better time than the Tripoli Rocketry Association did with the first launch of the day here in Las Cruces. The liftoff looked perfect, but the rocket's parachute failed to open, and it plunged back down into the New Mexico desert.
The chute failure might have been caused by "a lot of moisture on the rocket out on the pad," a member of the Tripoli team said.
Tripoli's second launch went much better: A chorus of kids shouted out the final seconds of the countdown, and the big red Phoenix XL rocket rose amid the thunder of launch to an altitude of about 22,000 feet. This time, three parachutes opened up, and the stages floated harmlessly back down to earth.
If you come to the X Prize Cup, be sure to bring your binoculars: Most of the action happens hundreds or even thousands of feet away from the crowd. (OK, Rocketman was an exception.) But there are plenty of booths along the midway, with rocketeers showing off their gleaming wares and concessionaires selling souvenirs and snacks.
One of the rocketeers was Tim Pickens, head of Alabama-based Orion Propulsion, who was preparing Orion's rocket-powered truck for a demonstration. The rocket engine mounted in the bed of the truck can achieve as much as 2,750 pounds of thrust. For the X Prize Cup demonstrations, the truck is tied down in place, but Pickens said the engine can provide a pretty good jolt of acceleration.
The truck tours around the country for demonstrations, but it's definitely not Pickens' main business.
"The truck was done purely as a hobby," he explained. "The point of it is just to have fun. ... It may be years before I can ride a rocket, but I can build a rocket truck and offer that feeling to other people."
Toward the end of the day, Pickens finally got his chance to light the rocket on that truck - with all the flame and noise you'd expect.
Sure, there have been some misfires at the Wirefly X Prize Cup - rocket engines that didn't go off the way they were intended, or robot climbers that didn't quite work at the Space Elevator Games. But there have been no bad blow-ups so far, and Pickens' rule seems to apply: The point of it is just to have fun.
