Armadillo’s Scorpius craft is the first in a field of entrants to successfully complete the requirements laid out by NASA, which involved ascending 164 feet, flying to a spot 164 feet away, landing, taking off then flying back to where it started. If neither of the two competing craft can satisfy the requirements by October 31, Armadillo will scoop the prize by default, which stands at a cool $US1 million.

And after the cash? Next stop, space.

“Since the Lunar Lander Challenge is quite demanding in terms of performance, with a few tweaks our Scorpius vehicle actually has the capability to travel all the way to space,” says Carmack.

“We’ll be moving quickly to do higher-altitude tests, and we can go up to about 6000 feet here at our home base in Texas before we’ll have to head to New Mexico where we can really push the envelope. We already have scientific payloads from universities lined up to fly as well, so this will be an exciting next few months for commercial spaceflight.”

John Carmack’s Armadillo Finally Wins Lunar Landing Challenge [Gizmodo]

Apparently I am not the only one with a craving for action-packed, massively-multiplayer online space combat. According to Codemasters, more than 250,000 individuals have signed up for a chance to test out NetDevil’s baby, with more flocking to the website to register every day. Needless to say, the developer is extremely excited.

“Our players’ enthusiasm continues to exceed our expectations at every milestone and we are extremely excited to achieve such fantastic support,” said Scott Brown, President of NetDevil. “We have thoroughly enjoyed obtaining some valuable feedback from the people in our Friends & Family test, helping us to take the next major step towards launch.”

See? I didn’t need to say it.

Of course, more folks signing up means less chance of you getting in, but look on the bright side… okay, I got nothing.

Well, he didn’t go there to hang out, eat freeze dried ice cream and float his rat tail. Garriott, son of astronaut Owen Garriott and designer of the Ultima franchise, went to space to work.

“I took saliva, urine and blood samples, kept logs of my sleep and used special instruments to measure my inner eye pressure,” Garriott said. “The data I collected was combined with similar samples from other astronauts to study how space suppresses the immune system, makes sleeping difficult, affects balance, weakens bones and causes muscle and back pain.”

That’s not all, he also snapped 2,600 digital pictures of Earth, which are being compared to photos his father took 35 years ago from the Skylab space station to see how our spinning blue planet has changed. There’s more! His research on the effects of microgravity on human bodies can be used in studying osteoporosis. He also grew crystalline proteins, which can be studied back on Earth to better understand the protein building blocks.

In October 2008, Garriott flew to the International Space Station as the sixth space tourist and the first offspring of an astronaut to go to space. It’s reported that Garriott paid US$30 million for the trip.

Experiments in Space: Richard and Owen Garriott on How Private Space Flights Can Advance Important Science [Popular Mechanics]

The trailer for the upcoming Apocrypha expansion to CCP’s massively-multiplayer space opera Eve Online manages to make the game look at least 10 times better than it actually plays.

The trailer does an excellent job of highlighting Eve Online’s strengths while skipping over the game’s weaknesses, which I suppose is what a good trailer is supposed to do. An excellent voice over grants the production an air of mystery and power as they highlight some of the most beautiful space scenes available in any video game, showing off massive battles waged across a backdrop of shining stars and swirling nebulae.

What the trailer most notably does not show is the first lonely hours spent wandering around the expansive universe, with nothing but the generally unhelpful help channel to keep you company, or the user interface that clutters up said beautiful vistas. It’s essentially the trailer version of a photoshopped MySpace picture. Still, I’d hit it.

John Carmack’s Armadillo Aerospace is investing in what it calls the “Fishbowl Spaceship” – an orbital bubble designed to let space tourists roll around in freefall like.. well, goldfish. Space goldfish.

Yes, it does look crazy and is probably designed purely to distract from Carmack’s real goal of building a portal to hell in the caverns of Mars. Armadillo hopes to have a prototype in orbit by the end of next year, with manned flights in 2010 at a low, low price of $US100,000.

Fishbowl Spaceship to give tourists a breathtaking 360-degree view [Dvice.com]

Players will definitely be given full control. A large portion of starship combat in Star Trek Online is tactical – manoeuvring your ship into position so you protect your vital systems as you attack your opponent’s weakest side. You need to be “in control” of your ship in order for that to work well and be fun.

Exactly! Nice to see Cryptic understands where their prospective players are coming from. The latest update also goes over the skill-based melee combat, even mentioning a certain Vulcan manoeuvre that is sure to have fans of the pointy-eared logic-addicts grabbing ineffectually at collarbones for days to come.

Ask Cryptic (October 27, 2008) [Star Trek Online via Eurogamer]

Not plucky Lord British, though. No, the good lord is safe in his heaven and has found the time to transmit a coded message of hope to us earth-bound types.

The multisquillionaire held up a card containing the message shortly after reaching orbit – the message is encoded in Logos Elements – the fictional runic system used in Garriott’s game Tabula Rasa.

Fans of the game have now decoded the runes and found it to be a quote – hit the jump to see what Lord British thinks we ought to know.

“Earth is the cradle of humanity but mankind will not be in the cradle forever.”
-Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky (Soviet Rocket Scientist)

Wow, that’s like, really deep.

Richard Garriott Sends Message During Launch

Not sure if there’s any experimenting on the “immortality drive” to be done or not, but that was the keystone of his pre-flight hype. The drive contains the digitized DNA sequences of a bunch of earth types — our editor included, along with Stephen Colbert and Stephen Hawking. It’ll stay aboard the space station in case life on earth is wiped out or something.

Garriott reportedly paid $US30 million for his flight but said he was able to recoup “a significant slice” of that beforehand. He gets back to earth Oct. 24.

US Game Designer Blasts Into Space with DNA Cargo [Associated Press via Wired, AP Photo]

It’s one thing to adjust to life in Star City–but quite another to endure the confounding, confining, and sometimes just plain goofy training regimen. The first challenge is the language. Garriott is an autodidact wunderkind who persuaded his high school teachers that learning Basic code counted as fulfiling his foreign-language requirement. He won’t be as fortunate at Star City. All of the instructions, instrumentation, and communications in space will be in Russian. So, for four hours a day, Garriott and Halik slave over fat, dusty language books in class, then tote them back to the Prophy to study more at night.

Great stuff. Click below to check out the full piece.

Going to Space? [Wired]

Just head over to www.jumpgateevolution.com and use your powers of deduction to determine where to go from there. Hope to see some of you in beta!