Doom and rockets: it sounds like an ‘edgy’ graphic novel, or an ’80s pop-goth band. In fact, it’s the tale of how a ground-breaking video game tied into a groundbreaking private space company. Both were the brainchildren of a workaholic geek named John Carmack.
After spending a year in juvie for his part in a plot to steal computers from his school, Carmack did two semesters of college, before dropping out to work as a freelance programmer. Carmack’s first big success in game programming was as part of the team who created the Commander Keen games. Then, in 1993, Carmack and his team at ID software created something that revolutionised video games.
It’s hard to over-emphasise just how amazing Doom was, in the early ’90s. For the first time, games created a true 3D environment, rather than side-scrolling 2D surfaces. Although the original Doom looks blocky and primitive by today’s standards, at the time it was something never seen before.
[Carmack] wanted players to feel like they were actually inside the game world. This obsession led to a breakthrough that would transform gaming forever.
Carmack implemented Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) in DOOM. This technique had never been used in video games before. It allowed the game engine to quickly determine which parts of the environment were visible to the player.
But implementing it would push him to his absolute limits.
Carmack is legendary for his work ethic. He has maintained, he says, a 10-hour day, six days a week, regiment throughout his career. He is also known for his week-long ‘programming retreats’. Often in a random city and hotel, he retreats for a solitary, uninterrupted flurry of work apart from his normal punishing regime. Such long hours of uninterrupted focus, he says, allows him to progress quickly and maintain a focused mindset.
Despite all this, he says, he has never experienced burnout.
Doom was released in December 1993. Development had begun just over a year before, but with the deadline looming, the code still wasn’t ready.
That’s when Carmack did something extraordinary: He sat down and coded for 28 hours straight. The result would revolutionize gaming as we knew it...
The DOOM engine was unlike anything before it: Advanced 3D rendering system, dynamic lighting systems, complex level architecture and support for multiplayer gameplay. But the most fascinating part was how they built it.
They used NeXTStep, a Unix-based system, to create DoomED. This revolutionary level editor let designers focus on creativity instead of coding. They could combine bitmaps without having to draw new ones. This changed how games were made, but there was an even bigger innovation.
The DOOM engine’s efficiency was groundbreaking. This wasn’t just a technical achievement. It set new standards for 3D graphics and gameplay.
What does all that have to do with rockets?
Carmack developed three principles while making Doom that he later applied to the field of rocketry: rapid iteration, modular design and efficient resource use. When he moved from gaming to form a new company in 2000, Armadillo Aerospace, he applied the same principles.
Just like DOOM’s modular engine, he created modular rocket systems. The gaming industry’s methods were now revolutionizing space travel.
Armadillo built a succession of innovative rocket designs, winning both the Level 1 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge in 2008 and then the Level 2 of the same challenge in 2009. But Armadillo remained a relatively small-scale company, with an appropriately modest budget (self-funded entirely by Carmack).
Thirteen years later, with an estimated one million dollars per year burn rate, Carmack announced that he was putting the company in ‘hibernation mode’. In 2015, the assets of Armadillo Aerospace were sold to Exos Aerospace Systems and Technologies.
Exos continues to operate as a developer of uncrewed, reusable launch systems. But the lasting legacy of Armadillo and Carmack is the modular approach he pioneered, which is used today by private space giant SpaceX.
