It looks like Armadillo is now dormant or dead.
Based on some hints I've received, I've suspected that this was coming for awhile...
The suborbital business never made any sense to me, its hard and other than artificially created markets (cruiser program) and thrill seekers I see no fundamental business case to be had at a price that is remotely appropriate to the level of effort.
Its been 10 years since space ship one and I see no one close to having a profitable business
launching suborbital passengers or payloads.
I've stared longingly at this business, I'd really like to do something here, but no matter how hard I look it has never made sense as a business...
There is remote possibility that someone might come up with a nanosat launch business that makes sense.(I've even written a somewhat optimistic business plan toward that end), but once you add it the difficulties of testing and regulatory compliance the whole thing is really really hard. For the time being it looks like the only real progress to be made will be done by large well funded organizations like SpaceX and possibly Blue Origin, but even Blue is subject to the whims of Bezeo's attention, he may find it more fun to play with his new newspaper...(He jsut spend 250M of his own $ on the Washington post)
I'd like to see someone try to build an expendable launcher where the primary aim is automated manufacturing and really low cost. I think that even if Spacex gets its 1st stage re-usability right it would be possible to beat them on cost, they currently have close to 3K employees, at reasonable aerospace wages at 33 flights a year that is 10M a launch just for wages..... Too bad Beal failed, I think they were really on the right track for low cost space access...
Dam stubborn gravity well....
