Its initial goal was to build a crewed suborbital spacecraft capable of space tourism,[2] and it had also stated long-term ambitions of orbital spaceflight.

[7][8] In August 2013, Carmack announced that Armadillo Aerospace had been put in "hibernation mode", following setbacks including the crash of the STIG-B rocket in January 2013.

[10] Exos completed acquisition of Armadillo assets in early 2015, and intended to begin launches of the Suborbital Active Rocket with Guidance (SARGE) in 2016 from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

He subsequently replied that there is the chance that he might "want to try at some point" with his own scheme, giving a sign that Armadillo Aerospace could someday return from hibernation mode.

The vehicle is able to transfer propellant through connecting pipes between opposite tanks by controlling ullage pressures with the thrusters; this helps it balance, minimizing gas use.

[citation needed] Armadillo Aerospace competed in the 2007 Lunar Lander Challenge event in the Wirefly X-Prize Cup 2007.

On the second attempt, the first leg flight was perfect; increased guidance and control capabilities allowed the module to, in Carmack's words, 'burn the X-mark off the target pad'.

With only a few seconds remaining in the required flight time, the damaged combustion chamber cracked again, which caused the vehicle to tilt enough to trigger a computer abort.

[citation needed] On the final attempt, MOD suffered a violent "hard start", resulting in engine explosion.

The violence of the explosion embedded a piece of the graphite chamber in the ground 64 meters from the launch pad and ended their attempts in 2007 for the prize.

[21] As of March 2010[update], the Rocket Racing League was utilizing a highly modified Velocity XL FG airframe and an Armadillo Aerospace 2,500 pound thrust liquid oxygen (LOX) and ethanol rocket engine in both the Mark-II X-Racer and Mark-III X-Racer demonstration vehicles.

The Super Mod reusable launch vehicle is a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing (VTVL)[23] uncrewed rocket which was developed by Armadillo in 2010–2011.

[26] Armadillo was headed, and 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 contributed their efforts twice weekly to Armadillo on a voluntary basis.

While details were sparse, John Carmack said, "There is a chance at this point that I may have written the last personal cheque I need to for Armadillo.

He estimated that another $2 million would be needed to achieve a crewed flight to 100 km using Armadillo's modular design in a "six-pack" configuration.

Armadillo had stopped accepting (profitable) contract R&D work two years prior in order to focus on development of a suborbital reusable rocket.

Several reasons were offered for this outcome, including a failure to adopt a multi-test-vehicle build strategy, making the loss of a single rocket more significant than it would have otherwise been.

Lutz Kayser, the founding engineer of OTRAG, visited Armadillo in May 2006 and loaned Carmack some of their original research hardware.

The individual modules are less complicated than our current vehicles, and I am becoming more and more fond of high production methods over hand crafter prototypes."