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Human spaceflight on a sko
The European Space Agency has about 2,000 staff and spends €365m a year on human spaceflight. Commercial spaceflight company SpaceX employs more than 4,000 staff and raised about $1bn in funding in January 2015. Common wisdom has it that this is the kind of organization, and money resources, you need to get humans into space.
Now a rag-tag team of about 50 volunteer physicists, engineers, mathematicians, software developers, sysadmins, pyrotechnicians and even a deep-sea rescue diver attempts to challenge that wisdom, by sending a manned capsule 100km above sea level, past the Karman line dividing Earth's atmosphere from outer space.
Their materials: anything they can salvage, off-the-shelf equipment, a 300 sq metre hangar at a closed shipyard near Copenhagen [Denmark] and a launchpad in the Baltic Sea. Their timeline: 5 to 10 years from now. Their budget: about €175,000 annually.
Rocket science is still rocket science, but since the golden age of spaceflight from 1950 to 1970, much of the theoretical basis has become public. There is still a long way from textbook to a flying rocket, but with enthusiasm, solid engineering skills and good craftsmanship, we make the impossible possible. (from their website [copenhagensuborbitals.com])
Ofcourse it is ridiculous to presume Copenhagen Suborbitals, the name of this collective, will ever succeed. When hell freezes over, turkey and apple pie will fly directly into my mouth, manna drops from heaven etcetera -- these guys are delusional.
Yet Copenhagen Suborbitals has already managed five rocket launches, more than a hundred engine tests and four versions of its space capsule since 2008. Maybe, just maybe, the right methodology [ranum.com] matters more than the available budget. So, what if, against all the odds, this bunch of nerds manage to launch a human into space using open source software and off-the-shelf hardware, on a shoestring budget?
