Danish team prepare to launch first home-built rocket, astronaut into space
By ANITuesday, August 24, 2010
COPENHAGEN - A group of Danish engineers are preparing to launch a home-built rocket, along with a human passenger, over 100 kilometers into the sky.
The Copenhagen Suborbitals will launch the rocket called ‘HEAT 1X’ from a floating barge in the sea, 12 nautical miles from shore, this weekend.
It will be towed out there by a homemade submarine, built by one of the men behind the project.
Peter Madsen, who lives onboard the submarine, had founded Copenhagen Suborbitals with Kristian von Bengston with the aim of building the world’s largest amateur space rocket.
Over the last year-and-a-half they have led a team of volunteers to create the ‘HEAT 1X’ rocket, and the micro spacecraft it will launch, called Tycho Brahe-1.
Tycho Brahe-1 will carry one human passenger, in a half-seated position, into space and back down again.
The seat is designed to minimize the gravitational pull on the passenger’s spine. The person on board will also have to wear a pressure suit.
According to News.com.au, the spacecraft will travel in an arc, jettisoning the rocket about halfway up and eventually peaking more than 100 kilometers above the Earth before coming down.
After it re-enters the atmosphere, parachutes will be deployed to slow it before it hits the water. (ANI)
