In which an actual living person, instead of just the ashes of TV actors, will be launched into space.
Here's a picture of the rocket and it's friend, the submarine:
Our mission is very simple. We are working towards launching a human being into space.
This is a non-profit suborbital space endeavor lead by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, based entirely on sponsors and volunteers.
Click here to find out more, and if you like, give them money.
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It says on the site you linked to:
"DESPITE WHAT THE NEWS IS TRYING TO TELL YOU,
THIS IS A TEST ROCKET FLYING TO A MAX OF 30 KM
(NOT INTO SPACE)"
cool nonetheless!
Note that this isn't the first example of this sort of thing. SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X Prize for private launch with a person back in 2004.
It's more like "an actual plastic dummy". The first flight is going to be unmanned. Probably, the next few are going to be unmanned, too.
âThe micro spacecraft (MSC) Tycho Brahe-1 is the payload of the HEAT booster. It is a pressurized volume providing support for one upright standing/half-sitting person, with a full view through a polymer plexiglas-dome to experience the entire ballistic ride.â http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/spacecraft.php
My comment: With a diameter of 0.64 m, pilots resembling Hermann Göring need not apply.
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For a real privately developed Low Earth Orbit (LEO) vehicle, see Falcon 9: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9
What bullshit. Their web site previously said "into space" in a "suborbital launch" or words to that effect. Despite what the website tells you now, I think that THEY MAY NEED A NEW PRESS MANAGER.
We've been glued to this craziness around the space center. There are so many things that...just...these guys must be suicidal. I haven't done a flow analysis or anything, but the plastic dome on a forward facing element? Stuff up there gets crazy hot. Air friction is a biatch. No roll control? No reaction control at all? Single failure parachute? With a sheet metal door hand drilled and pop riveted on?
The engine tests looked scary as hell too. They are obviously no where near a consistent grain regression rate, big chunks must be coming off and burning halfway through the nozzle (or later). I wonder what % of the nozzle area they might occupy at any point, and what the combustion chamber pressure looks like when that happens.
I mean I don't want to be the hater I'm clearly being, but dizzamn. I'd climb on a rocket that was 50/50 just to get the chance. I wouldn't climb on that thing. Which isn't to say I don't hope it works. Because that would be impressive. My money is split on the following squares:
*On pad/near pad destruction
*Pilot centrifuged into a fine gel coating the interior of the "payload" bay
*Free-fall from high altitude and in to the ocean.
Odds are 0.1, 0.16, and 0.3 respectively. Not determined in any scientific way.
If it works? I'm going to find a way to dig up $63k to go to space.
Holy fuck, Spiv. This is going to be more interesting to watch than baby races (which, admit it, people watch just to see the crashes.)
Do these folks have any high powered rocketry experience at all? They seem to be a team of an industrial designer with at least one hoax project under his belt and a small scale submarine builder.
I'm thinking the whole thing is a hoax. I'm torn on whether to buy the "rocket scientist" onesie for Huxley so we can have a picture of him wearing the merchandise from a) the most amazing private rocket adventure ever; b) that project where they blasted that poor guy to bits on the launch pad; or c) the biggest con of the 2010s.
I doubt it is a pure hoax. They seem to have put a lot of work into it, I just think they are way, way over their heads. This is just a large hybrid rocket, nothing that new, but still tricky to pull off. The fact that they haven't shown or documented (as far as I have seen) ground tests of their recovery system at any speed, or height worries me. I doubt it will CATO, but violent control loss, spinning up to unsurvivable speeds, separation failure, recovery deployment failure, and all sorts of recovery system failures still rank high on the list of probabilities. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the chute popped open, and the mount tethers ripped through the rest of the structure, a so called zipper failure.
In short, a successful launch wouldn't surprise me. A successful, as if manned, recovery absolutely shock me.
Wouldn't it be normal, if you designed and built an entirely new rocket, to send the first one up un-personed? Or at least, with a pigeon in it or something?
I don't knwo if this is going to work... Seems all to easy to be true!
The only view hole is the tiny dome in which the "astronaut" can view his flight.... It takes some balls the size of Jupiter to get launched in to space and watch the whole thing from a first person point of view trapped in a sardine can! I respect this guy but are we sure this is sane?
Mark Shuttleworth was the first space tourist. Period. This one looks like a hoax.
I don't care as long as every space tourist comes back with a new distribution of Linux.
Uh, from all the press I've read this is a test flight with a dummy. I thought they clearly stated that a manned flight is a future prospect?
The first flight is with a dummy. If the dummy survives, there will be a second flight "soon after" with a live person.
Good idea to test with a dummy first! Better then with animals! Andressa