Summary
June 6, 2011
On June 3, 2011 a group of Danish enthusiasts calling themselves the Copenhagen Suborbitals launched a homemade spacecraft. The rocket was launched from a floating ramp in the Baltic Sea and was built on, what for a rocket is a shoe-string budget of $70,000.
The capsule, named the "Tycho Brache" after the famed Danish astronomer, is only 65 cm (25.59 inches) in diameter and carried a single passenger, a crash-test dummy.
The rocket reached an altitude of 2.8 km (1.74 miles), far less than the team had hoped; and damage to the craft's parachute prevented it from fully opening, causing it to come down much more quickly than anticipated.
Peter Madsen and Kristian von Bengtson, whom the article describes as the "brains" behind the Copenhagen Suborbitals, hope to evetually be able to send a manned capsule as high as 120 km (74.56 miles), well past the edge of space.
Source
Game and Story Use
- In a present-day campaign, or one set Twenty Minutes into the Future, the party might become involved with a private company or group of amateurs involved in such a project.