Joining the Thrillionaires 311
now wanted to code the best software for the control of
the rockets. “You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to
stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the
dedication to go through with it,” he said.^122
Carmack read about how people thought NASA had
become a trucking company. But he didn’t want to launch
a truck – he wanted to launch a dragster into space. In the
local amateur rocket website, he searched for members who
wanted to build a vertical dragster, as he called his rocket,
and thus Armadillo Aerospace was born. The rumors says
that one of the reasons why he decided to start a rocket
company was because he felt he wasted too much money
on buying more and more customized Ferrari cars. At one
point he owned four of them, but gave one away as a price
in a gaming competition.^122
Due to his interest in rockets, Carmack became a
member of a new group of entrepreneurs called the thril-
lionaires. A member of the group believes it’s no longer
good enough to have a slow private jet. What you need is
a rocket.^121
Another member of the group is Paul Allen who at age
twelve tried to build a rocket. Using the ingredients needed
from his chemistry set, he filled an aluminum armchair leg
with the fuel mixture. The formula was correct, but he had
not looked up the melting point of aluminum. “It made
a great noise, and then melted into place,” he said. While
growing up, he co-founded Microsoft. As Microsoft became
a rather large company, he used his new wealth to invest
in the company Scaled Composites that designed Space-