Copenhegan Suborbitals

On Friday, a group of amateur rocketeers Copenhagen Suborbitals, successfully launched the world’s first amateur-built rocket made for human space travel. The home-made HEAT-1X rocket with the Tycho Brahe capsule reached an altitude of 2.8 kilometers, launching from its floating ‘Sputnik’ platform in the Baltic Sea off the east coast of the Danish island of Bornholm. The builders, Peter Madsen, Kristian von Bengtson and their team, hoped the craft would fly 15 to 16 kilometers into the sky on its maiden voyage, but they said they would also be happy if it launched at all. And the rocket shot almost straight up in a tremendous milestone for the amateur group which hopes to send people into space on a shoestring.

Copenhagen Suborbitals are doing things differently than other “commercial” space companies: they are open-source, so they are sharing their designs, and they have gotten this far with volunteers and donations. Since May 2008 they have been working full time to reach our goal of launching human into space and to show the world that human space flight is possible without major government budgets and administration.

This team work in a 300 sqm storage building, called Horisontal Assembly Building (HAB), placed on an abandoned but yet historic shipyard in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are working fulltime to develop a series of suborbital space vehicles - designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft.

Last September, the team’s first attempt to launch Heat-1X and Tycho Brahe came to halt when a standard hair-dryer that was being used as part of its construction went failed. But Friday’s successful test flight will enable the group’s next goal, which is to send their rocket and capsule into space, with the eventual goal of sending an even bigger rocket, with a human astronaut inside, 100 kilometers up in a suborbital ride into space.