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Non-Profit Space Rocket Launching In a Week
Plammox writes "A non-profit suborbital space endeavor lead by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen is trying to put a man in space. The first test of the boosters and space craft in combination with the sea launch platform will take place this week. The catch? All of this is a non-profit project based on voluntary labor and sponsors. How will they get the launch platform out in the middle of the Baltic sea to perform the test? With the founder's home-built submarine pushing it, of course."
The project leader, Peter Madsen, reportedly commutes to work every morning in his miniture submarine.
But not much less dangerous
Orbital is much more dangerous. Re-entry at hypersonic speeds is not an easy problem to solve.
I don't agree. Rocks do it all the time but admittedly pull a lot of gees. Build a carbon fibre sphere, coat it with an ablative heat shield. Tell the occupants to slide around inside so the heat is shared across the surface. Build a couple of doors with explosive devices which can open them even if the heat shield has melted them closed. Punch out at five km altitude and land with conventional parachutes.
If you want to get complex build a double cone: shallow cone with head shield on the bottom. Steep cone on the top. You need a reaction control system to point the blunt side forwards during aerobraking.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Then consider this: The excitement of this single project will probably make many more kids in Denmark want to enter science than any previous marketing driven campaign for recruiting engineering students. It shows the awesome feeling of putting theory into practice and how far you can get if you have one determined team of talented folks.
I'm proud to be a donor, and this is one of the best expenditures I've ever done.
Once I knew about them one year ago (through Slashdot, by the way) I told my wife: "If I stop being a rocket modelling fan forever, will you let me give them the money I planned to spend on rocket models for the rest of my life? It could be the way to be part of a really big thing".
And she said: "Ok, but I don't want to know if he dies or not".
I think it's a fair deal, so I gave them a huge amount of money and I won't tell her about the final result.
Okay, now I'm jealous. I used to think I was DIY for building my own satellite (Project Calliope), but... man, I'm using someone else's rocket instead of building my own. I feel so old fashioned. The Copenhagen group are totally awesome!
A.
There's another thread of interest in there, involving an organization that aims to become the "sourceforge.net" of aerospace engineering. Their site should be ready within another week or so, as a collaborative development environment, skill-matching social network, and space science/engineering knowledgebase.
It also happens, their first official act will be a grant of approximately 5000$ towards Copenhagen Suborbitals. We have raised about 1500$ so far.
http://osm.chipin.com/osm-jul-2010
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3335167
The "Open Space Movement" supports Copenhagen Suborbitals.
Yeah, but playing the guitar is useful. Manned space flight was a stunt then, it's a stunt now. It serves no purpose whatsoever, except to give hardons to nerds and deluded Space Nutters who think we'll be mining asteroids next.
So you think giving hardons is useless? I can tell you that a whole industry is built on it! :-)
On a more serious note: Where do you suggest we get our minerals from when we have used up all supplies of some element found here on earth, if not through space mining?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.