Copenhagen Suborbitals

Copenhagen Suborbitals is a crowd-funded, open-source human space program. It has flown five home-built rockets and two mock-up space capsules since 2008. The organization successfully launched its Nexø II rocket in the summer of 2018. Its stated goal is to have one of its members reach space (above 100 km) on a sub-orbital spaceflight. The organization was founded by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen. The program's 55 members work on it during their free time and elect a chairman and board members at their annual general assemblies. , the chairman is Carsten Olsen. Copenhagen Suborbitals was founded in 2008 by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen as a non-profit, crowd-funded project that discussed most of their operations on blogs and lectures. On 23 February 2014, the board of Copenhagen Suborbitals announced that Kristian von Bengtson had left the group, after falling out with Madsen. Madsen left in June 2014. In 2014, Copenhagen Suborbitals settled on the basic design for their first crewed rocket and space capsule. The rocket is named Spica and will stand 12–14 m tall with a diameter of 950 mm. It will be powered by the BPM-100 engine class, using liquid oxygen as oxidizer and ethanol as fuel, producing 100 kN of thrust. It's likely to feature pressure-blow-down tanks, optimized by a dynamic pressure regulation (DPR) system, but turbo pumps are also a possibility. Flight control will be thrust vectoring via a gimballed engine. The rocket will be fully guided by home-built electronics and software. Most of the systems and technology will initially be tested on the smaller Nexø class rockets in 2016/18. The space capsule will be of a tubular design similar to its predecessor Tycho Brahe, but its greater diameter will allow the astronaut to assume a sitting position during launch and re-entry to withstand the G-forces. In 2014/2015 the group designed, built and tested a series of smaller engines with a nominal thrust of 2 and 5 kN. The BPM-5 class will fly on the Nexø I and II rockets in 2016/2018, paving the way for the much bigger Spica rocket and engine.