Tom James @ 30-10-2008
An interesting article on Kummersdorf in Germany, site of some of Wernher von Braun’s rocket experiments before WWII:
It is here that the German military initiated the world’s first large-scale rocket development programme in the first half of the 20th Century.
This programme led to the development of the infamous V-2 rocket, used by Germany against the allies during World War II.
More information about the Kummersdorf proving grounds can be found here.
[article and image from the BBC]
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Tom James @ 22-10-2008
Danish researchers at the Copenhagen Suborbitals project seek to launch a one-man rocket projectile into space, from their mission statement:
This is a privately funded suborbital space endeavor.
Our mission is to launch a human being into space.
We are currently developing a series of suborbital space vehicles - designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft.
Two rocket vehicles are under development. A small unmanned sounding rocket, named Hybrid Atmospheric Test Vehicle or HATV and a larger booster rocket named Hybrid Exo Atmospheric Transporter or HEAT, designed to carry a micro spacecraft into a suborbital trajectory in space.
What fun! The thought of riding into the sky inside a rocket!
Apparently the idea is for the astronaut to be situated in a standing position beneath the transparent, polymer-plexiglass nose-cap!
Their candour is to be saluted, as is the bravery of the prospective astronaut. I wonder if the project will ever come to fruition?
[via Boing Boing][image from the Copenhagen Suborbital website]
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Paul Raven @ 29-09-2008
For my fellow dreamers in the audience, here’s a little something to momentarily take your mind off financial instruments, presidential debates and environmental doom:
From the press release:
SpaceX announces that Flight 4 of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle has successfully launched and achieved Earth orbit. With this key milestone, Falcon 1 becomes the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth.
“This is a great day for SpaceX and the culmination of an enormous amount of work by a great team,” said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. “The data shows we achieved a super precise orbit insertion—middle of the bull’s-eye — and then went on to coast and restart the second stage, which was icing on the cake.”
Watching that makes me feel that - as a species - we’re pretty awesome. It’s just a shame we can’t stop arguing over which subgroups of the species are more awesome than the others… what might we achieve then?
[Story via pretty much everywhere; video first seen at Warren Ellis's gaff]
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