I am John’s space Armadillo

Natural progression is a lovely thing - to simply move on from one thing to another, naturally. You’d expect most things in life to follow a straightforward path, be it in science, relationships or one’s career. In the absence of nuclear warfare and

Natural progression is a lovely thing - to simply move on from one thing to another, naturally. You'd expect most things in life to follow a straightforward path, be it in science, relationships or one's career. In the absence of nuclear warfare and an Ebola epidemic, there is not much that can disrupt this casual flow.

Make way for John Carmack, id Software's lead man and 64-bit colour guru, who along with a team of volunteers, is going to build a spaceship.

Thanks John for ruining the flow. We Atomicans love variety though.

However, if your ears shut down from shock the first time, here it is again.

A spaceship.

Armadillo Aerospace (www.armadilloaerospace.com), Carmack's aerospace company, will endeavour to construct a craft capable of blasting three unfortunate souls 100km into the atmosphere. Twice.

These are the requirements to win X-Prize, a US$10 million reward for amateur rocket jockeys willing to undertake such a task, and complete it successfully.

At the moment, twenty-one teams are competing from all over the world, including patrons of Romania, Russia, Britain and of course, the United States.

The competition deadline is January 1st, 2005 - so if anyone is interested, you've got a few years to get your vessel together. You will then have to send your construction into the sky twice, with both launches required to occur within the space of two weeks.

I don't know about you, but I'm definitely out of the running.

However, we are still left asking 'why?' - Carmack summed up his reasoning behind the undertaking by comparing it to his love of Ferraris, "I thought to myself, you know, for less money that I spend on Ferraris the past decade, I think I can make my own spaceship."

Well, so much for the casual picture of the world.