The Crazy DIY Spaceflight Project That Just Might Work

[Onkel Neal]

We know these guys...




In May 2008, two men climbed into a 40-ton submarine docked at an abandoned Copenhagen shipyard. One of the men had built the 58-foot-long sub in his spare time, and inside they chatted about the future. It involved rockets -- big rockets.

Although it was the first meeting between Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, the submarines creator, the duo emerged with a daring plan: to launch themselves into suborbital space using custom-built contraptions. And with that, Copenhagen Suborbitals was born.

Co-founders von Bengtson, an aerospace scientist and former NASA contractor, and Madsen, an entrepreneur and aerospace engineer, have a lot to be proud of since they founded their non-profit space program four years ago. In June 2011, for example, Copenhagen Suborbitals army of volunteers successfully built, launched and recovered a 31-foot-tall rocket --the largest amateur launcher ever built -- with a crash-test dummy tucked inside.

That first prototype ended its flight two miles up, and the organization has yet to check off their ultimate goal: sending a person more than 60 miles above the Earth, a height widely considered the boundary of outer space. But now they are creating a bigger, better and badder space vehicle to get there.

We have gone from having a crazy idea on a submarine to a smoothly run organization that builds rockets and spacecraft, and has experience with big launches, said von Bengtson, who also blogs about the project for Wired at Rocket Shop. It feels like we have become a part of a new era in space. I wouldnt trade that for anything. Not for millions of dollars.
I think were watching something that may be bigger than we realize it is.

Building rockets to launch people to the edge of space without a governments help isnt a new idea. Commercial companies like Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace, for example, are each developing their own vehicles to grant customers several minutes of zero-gravity and an amazing view of the Earth from space.

Copenhagen Suborbitals, however, is a radical departure from such private spaceflight efforts. It has no board of directors to please, no shareholders to answer to and no strategic timelines to follow. Its members dont care about competition. Even the notion of selling a ride doesnt factor into von Bengtson and Madsens vision.
The actual flight is not really what drives us. Its the whole process of building, encountering problems and designing solutions, von Bengtson said. The actual launch will be somewhat of a sad thing for everyone.

To date, Copenhagen Suborbitals has performed about 50 static rocket-engine tests, in which the machine is secured to the ground to study its performance. The two co-founders build and test their own hardware at the outfits headquarters, which moved in August 2009 to the abandoned shipyard in downtown Copenhagen where Madsens sub is docked. (Their former headquarters: a barge anchored in the Port of Copenhagen.)



read the full article here
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...itals-profile/