Richard Branson behauptet zwar, dass sein SpaceShipTwo das sexyste Raumschiff aller Zeiten sei, ich persönlich finde folgendes Projekt aber tausendmal interessanter: Von einer Startrampe in der Ostsee wollen dänische Hobbyraketenbauer am 31. August eine selbstkonstruierte, bemannte Rakete mit einem Crashtest-Dummy an Bord ins All schießen:
"A team of Danish volunteers has built a rocket capable of carrying a human into space, and will be launching it in a week’s time. The project ... has been funded entirely by donations and sponsorship ... The rocket is named HEAT1X-TYCHO BRAHE, and its first test flight will carry a crash-test dummy, rather than a human, so that the safety aspects of the design can be analyzed. It’ll launch from a floating platform that the team has also built, which will be towed into the middle of the Baltic Sea by a submarine called Nautilus that the pair built as their last project ... The creators are members of the SomethingAwful web community, and have been posting pictures and answering questions there. In response to one question asking what the chances of the person inside dying are, they replied: “Unlike Columbia we’re not moving at orbital speeds so ‘dying a gruesome death burning up on re-entry’ with our kit has a very low outcome probability.” Danish Volunteers Build Manned SpacecraftZur Webseite mit dem Countdown gehts hier lang.
