24-08-10 Denmark to send man into space

The Soviet Union gave the world cosmonauts,America followed with astronauts and China eventually added its own Sinonauts.If all goes to plan on a floating platform in the Baltic sea during the next three weeks,a 63cm-wide rocket hand-built by two self-employed engineers will herald the unlikely arrival of a new breed of space pioneers – the Danonauts.Depending on weather conditions and some last-minute fine tuning of its oxygen-fuelled engine, the Hybrid Exo Atmospheric Transporter or Heat 4 rocket is scheduled to launch from a barge off the wind-swept island of Bornholm before mid-September.In so doing it will bring significantly closer the day when Denmark – a country hitherto better known for the combustive qualities of vikings and roll mops – breaks into the exclusive club of four nations to have sent a human being into space.Blast off for the 1.6-tonne projectile,which is due to take place during a 17-day window beginning this weekend,will be the culmination of six years' work for Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen,the two Danish enthusiasts who have dedicated themselves to the successful launch of the world's first amateur-built rocket capable of manned space flight.Although the first flight will be carrying a crash test dummy,it is intended that Heat 4 will eventually take a human in the shape of former Nasa scientist Mr von Bengtson into sub-orbital space inside a capsule barely big enough to contain his body in a standing position and topped with a thick glass dome allowing the one-man crew a 360-degree view of a rapidly-shrinking Earth.If all goes to plan,the 9 metre-high rocket will burn through its fuel of liquid oxygen and solid rubber in about 60 seconds to propel the craft at 1,250mph to a height of more than 100km where it will experience weightlessness for about five minutes before drifting back to the Baltic sea slowed by a parachute.All this for approximately €50,000 (£41,000) paid entirely by donations of between 10p and £2,000 from members of the public and sponsors.The cost is about 0.02 per cent of the £290m average cost of a Nasa space mission.