In private spaceflight, there are fewer rules. One Copenhagen group is taking that to the extreme with a DIY rocket.
in a small Danish town, Carsten Olsen didn’t have much access to information about space. Until the internet came along. Once connected, Olsen started frequenting discussion forums, where real rocket scientists and even astronauts came to chat. He ordered rocketry books on Amazon and became obsessed with reaching toward that great beyond.
Given that, “space cowboys” is a pretty accurate term for what CopSub is doing and for what the law allows it to do. But the label also applies to the cushy spaceflight capsules supplied by billionaire-backed companies. Policies do exist to protect people on the ground—by requiring that rockets operate as advertised, that they lift off from places where an accident wouldn’t harm nearby civilians, and that their crews be trained in emergency procedures.
“If we want to reap the full benefits of human spaceflight in the future, whether it be for exploration, scientific research, business, or tourism, we will need to find ways to improve the safety of those operations,” reads a 2020 paper titled “Human Spaceflight Safety: Regulatory Issues and Mitigating Concepts,” written by Josef Koller, systems director for the Center for Space Policy and Strategy at the Aerospace Corporation, and George Nield, president of the company Commercial Space...
Von Bengtson had previously been on contract with NASA, working on human-centered spacecraft design, and Madsen was an entrepreneur who, later, would be convicted of the murder of journalist Kim Wall. Three years before the murder took place, CopSub and Madsen parted ways, and the space organization cut all ties with its co-founder.
In fact, the amateur space program’s safety status banks on its rockets’ simplicity: Much of it is based on technology similar to what NASA used in the 1950s and 1960s. Just as a smart fridge has more points of failure than one made of mere coils and refrigerant, CopSub contends that a less complex space system has fewer breakable parts than one ruled by robotics and computers. If done right, it could leave fewer ways for a human passenger to get hurt.
But the technical problems continued as well. In late 2014 an experiment, recorded on a GoPro, went awry. It was a static rocket-engine test using liquid fuel, in which the rocket was supposed to stay strapped to the ground. Just after ignition, flames broke out and engulfed both the craft and its stand. As the initial burst died down, the wrecked machine made moaning noises, like the cries of a lonely, whale-like alien. Wilson was standing in a bunker about 300 feet away.
It didn’t take long for the authors’ vision to come to life. Last year, The Aerospace Corporation, headquartered in El Segundo, California, launched an institute to “enhance the safety of space and space-related activities for government, commercial, and international customers,” as described on its website. But one of the new group’s significant challenges will be coming up with recommendations for private space vehicles that vary wildly.
The technology aboard modern spaceships is complex in part so it can diagnose problems and introduce redundancy; that allows the craft to fail in numerous ways—without killing the crew. That complexity is one NASA requirement that CopSub won’t meet, but, Larsen points out, their craft only needs to be safe and dependable for a 4-minute flight, rather than days or weeks.
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