Stig rocket being outfitted at Armadillo Aersospace. (Credits: Ben Brockert/Armadillo aerospace).
On November 22, Armadillo Aerospace performed a hover test on their tube rocket Stig-A. According to Armadillo, the goal was to simply keep the rocket upright during the test and Stig-A performed successfully, despite some visible side-to-side drift.
The Stig rocket line is a Vertical Take- off Vertical Landing (VTVL) rocket. It is designed as a preliminary step towards a fully reusable VTVL human rated vehicle. The line is named after the driver in British auto show Top Gear.
The videos below, courtesy of Ben Brockert of Armadillo Aerospace, replays the first and second hover tests.
First Hover Test
Second Hover Test
![A trajectory analysis that used a computational fluid dynamics approach to determine the likely position and velocity histories of the foam (Credits: NASA Ref [1] p61).](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/fluid-dynamics-trajectory-analysis-50x50.jpg)
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