Home made rockets launched from home made submarines next to dragon wings floating in the ocean on your SpacePod for August 24th, 2010
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Before we begin I just wanted to give a shout out to our new viewers on both Space.com and Universe Today. Hopefully you like what you’ll see and you’ll stick around for a while, check out some of our other videos and join us for our live weekly show all about space. For today though, lets start over the Pacific Ocean where SpaceX tested the Dragon’s parachute deployment system on August 12th, 2010.

The dragon spacecraft will initially transport cargo to the International Space station but is just begging to be human rated. That’s cool and all, but lets go to the fringe of NewSpace with Copenhagen Suborbitals.

This next Monday, right after SpaceUp DC, the non-profit team that is Copenhagen Suborbital will launch their Heat 1X rocket from the Baltic Sea. The ultimate goal is to put a human in to space, although it looks as though the accommodations may be a bit more restrictive than that of Virgin Galactic. This test flight will include a capsule with a human dummy that will float back down to the water. Well, we hope.

This particular mission should go as high as 93 miles or just under 1/2 way to the International Space Station. This is Denmarks largest launch ever and should be awesome. How awesome? Well, they are towing the rocket out to sea using a home-made submarine that they built. If that’s not an epic awesome of epic epicness then I don’t know what is!

Of course when I watch their engine test fireing I can’t help to think that it looks a bit rougher than would be required for human spaceflight. I guess we’ll see this Monday. And if you want to keep the conversation going, join us in Washington, D.C. this Friday and Saturday for your Space Unconference. Spacevidcast will be there, and I hope you will be too!


  1. Jeffrey Alles says:
    August 24, 2010 at 7:02 am

    I was just talking to Jeph about the Universe Today drop. Very interesting.. I’m guessing that will not be the final man rated version of the Heat1X?

    Reply
  2. Alexandru Csete says:
    August 24, 2010 at 9:05 am

    The luxury of a Virgin Galactic spaceship is four space tourists. Space explorers can do just fine with the spartan accomodation of the Copenhagen Suborbitals capsule :)

    FYI, the submarine UC3 Nautilus is a previous project of Peter Madsen and it has its own website.
    There is also a nice video tour in the submarine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZX6BHMAf4w

    Reply
  3. Trent Waddington says:
    August 24, 2010 at 10:35 am

    Copenhagen Suborbitals is looking for a few good men or women:

    “We could really use a local electrician to help wire up a legal configuration of lanterns on the rig for the overnight towing. The big haul starts on Friday and we’re busy as bees with getting everything ready.

    We could also use more VHF hand radios.

    Above all else, we can use capable hands. We’re always open for new members with practical backgrounds or skills or simply a demonstrably sincere interest in electronics, programming, metalworking, automatiom, construction, machinery, CNC milling, lasercutting, navigation, radio technology, telemetry, explosives, chemistry, physics, flight/hydro/thermo/aero- dynamics, sailing, safety, project planning, fundraising – anything remotely relevant, really – you’re very welcome, come on board, join the fun. Sweat, bleed, curse and cry with the rest of us. All you gotta do is be able to show up and participate. You won’t get paid and nobody will have much time to teach you basic skills but you get to wear the dorky high-visibility fluorescent team jackets and matching hard hat. And sometimes there is cake.”

    Reply
  4. Emory Stagmer says:
    August 30, 2010 at 3:15 am

    A lot of talk about this during SpaceUpDC including an entire session now archived on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/spacevidcast#p/a/u/2/ZRFmvqQnXZU
    Some concerns from rocket scientists talking about things like weight distribution and aerodynamics.  Good conversation.

    Reply