Apparently, NASA's got it all wrong. Who says you need to spend billions of dollars to put people into space?

The competition to build and fly a rocket ship into space and back is heating up as the Jan. 1, 2005, deadline approaches for the X Prize. Sure, a year may seem like a long way off, but in the world of rocket science it's a blip in time. More than 20 teams from around the world are vying for the $10 million prize.

Among them is Armadillo Aerospace, a research and development team out to prove you don't have to have big bucks for a big launch. Tonight on "Tech Live" we'll travel to Texas to meet the quirky group and check in on their progress.

From 'Doom' to space cadet

The man at Armadillo's helm is no rocket scientist. He's a computer programmer. John Carmack, co-founder and owner of id Software, started Armadillo Aerospace more than two years ago. Once a side project, it's grown into a big chunk of his life, Carmack says.

"It was exciting to move to a new field I didn't know anything about," Carmack says. "I am drawn to the engineering. I enjoy solving problems and finding novel solutions to things, and I've been at the top of my field in software for so long. The challenges, while they evolve, they are not so novel anymore."

Thus, Carmack's interest in building rocket ships began. His Ferraris went into the garage, and out came an SUV so he can cart around rocket parts. He's paying for everything out of his own pocket (made possible by id Software's success). The company is best known for the videogames "Doom," "Return to Castle Wolfenstein," and "Quake."

"Effectively, I stopped buying Ferraris and turbo-charging them and started building rocket ships," Carmack says.

Rockets? Check. Fuel? Check. Armadillo? Check

Seven team members make up Armadillo Aerospace, not including the group's mascot, Widget, an armadillo. They're all volunteers dedicated to winning the X Prize. They gather twice a week at a Dallas warehouse to work toward their goal. To win the X Prize they need to build a rocket ship that can carry three people 62.5 miles above the Earth and then return them safely. They intend to do this by testing on a small scale and then retesting again and again. The team is spending between $1 million and $2 million to build its craft.

"By working on a small scale, it's not uncommon to do a dozen or so small tests [each weekend], changing things on the fly," team member Neil Milburn says. "We achieve a lot in a day or two days that other programs would take weeks, months, or even years to accomplish."

One of the team's biggest accomplishments so far is a successful manned landing in the warehouse parking lot. Russ Blink "piloted" the first flight of the group's landing vehicle in September 2002. The flight came after months of fine-tuning the vehicle, which consists of a chair mounted to a metal frame with rockets strapped to the sides.

"I was a little nervous after such a long time of working on it," Blink says. "Now all of a sudden I was on it. I could feel it shake. It was like being on a real rocket."

An ambulance was standing by in case of an emergency, but it wasn't needed. The flight went off without a hitch. The crew hopes to launch the real deal at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Rockets are like videogames, right?

As head of id Software, Carmack brings a unique perspective to the science of rocketry. Computer software is a cornerstone of the group's efforts, and Carmack has developed all the software.

"The rocket plan is usually to build a really, really big engine, fly it high, then at some point people have some hazy idea of putting a control system on it," Carmack says. "We kind of started on the exact opposite side. We built really tiny engines, like 50-pound thrust engines, for our early vehicles, but we built a really good computer system for it. That allowed us to do lots and lots of testing behind our building."

Testing is key for Carmack, who doesn't want to work for months only to find out a rocket doesn't work. He believes the more testing done, the faster the crew can work out any kinks.

"Some people have commented that I am trying very hard to make aerospace like software, and that's the truth," he says. "If we looked at what we do in software, if we could only compile and test our program once a year, we'd never get anything done. But that's the mode of aerospace."

It might be the mode of aerospace, but it's certainly not the mode for Armadillo Aerospace. The team is ahead in its development of an X Prize-class vehicle.

So what happens once the contest is over? The team says that, win or lose, it has no intention of stopping there. For them, space is the limit.