John Carmack

From SpaceWiki

John Carmack, like Richard Garriott, comes to the space industry from the video game industry, where he too still also holds a "real job" at his game company id Software. He had a bit of a "bad boy" childhood, fueled by his interest in computers to the point that he at one point broke into a school to steal their Apple II computers and was caught by police. Later he attended college briefly before dropping out to work as a freelance programmer. He began writing games with friends in the late 80s and early 90s, which eventually led to the founding of his company and the production of iconic games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. His real genius in game development has been to push the limits of computing in the development of novel game engine techniques and his company has also made money through allowing other companies to use their rendering engines.

At some point around the year 2000, he decided to return to the hobby of rocketry, something he had done for fun in his youth. But, having more resources now, he decided that he could really do some unique things in the rocketry world. After gathering some high-end rocketry hobbyists from his local area in Texas together and selling them on his plans, he started Armadillo Aerospace to develop advanced rockets on a part-time basis when he wasn't working at id Software. The business morphed over time into a full time company that employs about a half-dozen people full-time in Mesquite, Texas. Armadillo was notably the winner of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Level 1 and the close runner-up for Level 2, taking home $850,000 from NASA to help them in developing further advanced rocket vehicles.

Read more about John's pursuits on his twitter account and his blog.