Video: Amateur-Built Danish 'Non-Profit Rocket' Blasts Off from the Baltic Sea

Tycho Brahe and Heat 1-X, Lifting Off

Just one day later than expected--and that’s pretty good for a rocket launch--Copenhagen Suborbitals’ “non-profit rocket” successfully launched from its catamaran launch platform in the Baltic Sea today, notching a major milestone for the organization that plans to eventually send an amateur-built manned rocket into suborbital space.

The flight did not come off perfectly smoothly--few first tests of a technology do--but the team is calling it a complete success. The launch gathered the the organization its first flight data on its HEAT 1-X rocket booster and the Tycho Brahe capsule that can carry a crew of one. The ascent reportedly came off a bit more sideways than the team anticipated, but using the data collected the team should be able, slowly but surely, to begin ironing out the wrinkles in the largest amateur-built space rocket that we know of.

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Technology, Clay Dillow, copenhagen suborbitals, heat 1-x, non-profit rocket, Space, tycho brahe, Video

The eventual idea is to send space tourists into suborbital space atop the HEAT 1-X, where he or she will take in spectacular views of space and the Earth below through the Tycho Brahe’s polymer plexiglass dome. These manned flights are a ways off, but just getting the thing into the air is a huge step forward. Now the data crunching and design tweaking can begin in earnest.

In the video below, you can see two attempts. The first fails at the 1:53 mark when the rocket igniters fail. The do-over a few minutes later at 5:45 is decidedly more satisfying.

[Fox News]