LENSopenhagen Suborbitals (CS) is
an amateur space programme
aiming to put a person in space.
That’s an ambitious target – you
need a powerful rocket, a reliable
launching system, and a way of
getting an astronaut safely back to Earth. This has
obviously all been done before, but only by huge
space programmes run by the world’s largest nations.
Replicating this achievement with a completely
volunteer staff of hobbyists is a massive challenge,
but it’s one that CS seems determined to meet. The
CS team have already been working on this for seven
years, and have launched seven rockets, each one
getting them a little closer to their goal.
CS’s first rocket, HEAT 1X stood 9.38 metres
tall and weighed 1680 kg on the launch pad – an
enormous rocket by amateur standards. As a
testament to the team’s ambition to launch a person
into space, the HEAT 1X included a capsule with
a life-size crash test dummy. It was powered by a
hybrid engine which used a liquid oxidiser (nitrous
oxide) and a solid fuel (polyurethane).
Unfortunately, the rocket started to pitch to one side
immediately after launch, and ended up at an angle
30 degrees off horizontal, and had to be manually
shut down (via the radio link). A post-mission analysis
concluded that a misaligned engine nozzle caused the
problem. As HEAT 1X was passively stabilised, there
was no process to correct this problem in flight.
Since then, CS has been launching smaller rockets
and building up the technology bit by bit. The most
recent rocket, Nexø II, took off from CS’s floating
launch platform in the Baltic Sea on 4 August 2018.Powered by liquid ethanol and oxygen, with thrust
vectoring to able it to adjust its flight, this is a far more
advanced rocket than HEAT 1X. It reached an altitude
of 6500 metres, before returning to Earth successfully
via a parachute and a splashdown. Although this was
far too small to carry a person (6.7 metres long, 30 cm
wide, and weighing 292 kg at take-off), this is the first
CS rocket to achieve a landing soft enough that a
human could have survived. This launch wasn’t without
problems, though, failing to reach its intended altitude
of 12 000 metres. The team are still investigating why
this happened.BIGGER AND BETTER
The final goal of CS lies in the Spica rocket, which
will stand 13 metres tall, 95.5 cm wide, and weigh
4000 kg. This will be powered by a liquid-fuel engine
similar to those in the Nexø II, but scaled up to provide
100 kN of thrust (compared to 5 kN on the most recent
launch). Hopefully, the Spica rocket will be able to
reach an altitude of over 100 km above Earth (known
as the Kármán line, and generally accepted as the limit
of space) and deploy a capsule which will contain an
astronaut who will then come safely down to sea.
If you’re interested in what it takes to build and
launch rockets of this scale, CS has an informative set
of videos that take you through the things the team are
building and the problems they encounter. You can take
a look at hsmag.cc/DJOviq.
CS is financed by supporters who either sign up
to contribute monthly (in a Patreon-like fashion), or
buy merchandise. If you’re keen to see them reach
their goal, you can help sponsor the mission on their
website: hsmag.cc/XSGpAt.C
Left
The Nexø II
rocket being
safely recovered
from the Baltic Sea
Credits
Copenhagen
Suborbitals –
Mads Stenfatt