Armadillo Aerospace - Staff and Funding

Staff and Funding

Armadillo is headed and has been largely funded by John Carmack, a developer of video games including the Doom and Quake series. During its early days, all of its employees (including Carmack) had other, full-time jobs and contribute their efforts twice weekly to Armadillo on a voluntary basis. Armadillo has a relatively small budget and is not supported by aerospace companies or agencies like NASA, ESA, or Boeing. Armadillo Aerospace has publicly declared itself fully self-funded.

In February 2006, Carmack stated that the program so far had cost slightly over $2 million. Even by the standards of X-Prize candidates, this is a low budget. Scaled Composites is estimated to have spent $25 million on its SpaceShipOne development program.

On August 8, 2006, Armadillo Aerospace announced that it had reached a sponsorship deal with NVIDIA. While details were sparse, John Carmack said, "There is a chance at this point that I may have written the last personal check I need to for Armadillo."

On April 2, 2008, Carmack offered an updated figure of "total cost to date, about $3.5 million". He estimated that another $2 million would be needed to achieve a manned flight to 100 km using Armadillo's modular design in a "six-pack" configuration.

By 2010, Armadillo had 7 full-time employees, and was profitable on ongoing operations (though Carmack was continuing to invest in development efforts).

The company has a mascot armadillo named Widget.