John Carmack and his team competed in a contest to create a lowcost rocket that will fly up 100 kilometres and safely land after achieving that height. [quote]Two low-cost rockets vying for the $10 million Ansari X Prize have failed spectacularly within a day of each other. The calamities have probably cost both team their chances of winning, as the prize expires at the end of 2004 A 1.2-metre-wide rocket designed by John Carmack, creator of the hugely successful Doom video games, crashed about 20 seconds after launch in Texas on 7 August. ..... "You always hope for perfection, but we're not surprised when we have crashes like this," says Carmack, lead engineer and funder of Armadillo Aerospace. He says prototypes of his company's hydrogen peroxide-fuelled rocket, Black Armadillo, have now crashed "spectacularly" four times out of a total of about 35 tests. But he says the crashes are not complete losses.[/quote] The crash cost the team a $35,000 rocket and a chance at the Ansari X Prize Hmm, good to see the money gained from Doom3sales being used to blow up things....i guess ?