Copenhagen Suborbitals: The world’s only manned, amateur space program

Post by jopsen » Sun, Oct 14, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

larkeith wrote: post #41

imglorp wrote: post #28

I'm curious how a volunteer organization will achieve the culture and technical maturity to make human rated hardware without a high probability of a horrible death. Think about all the conditions in a long chain of events that must all go right, in a launch, to avoid cooking, freezing, squishing, cratering, asphyxiating, poisoning, exploding, or drowning your crew. After decades of practice, NASA ended up under 1:10…

It should be noted that, being strictly suborbital, both the challenges and risks are orders of magnitude lower than even a launch to LEO, and that unlike many space programs, they have quite a bit of prior history and information to draw on. I don't know whether this will be enough to reduce risk to near-NASA levels, however. I am curious as to whether those odds cited are of partial successes, safely-aborted launch…

Post by perl4ever » Sun, Oct 14, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

rfrey wrote: post #32

jasonpeacock wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet everyday you (and everyone else) get in a car with much higher risk of death. Why the double standard for experimental space fight?

Do you really think car travel has a 1/100 chance of death, or is this a whoosh moment for me?

Post by ByThyGrace » Sun, Oct 14, 2018, 7:23 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #46

gpm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm? The goal is to stick a person at the top of it. That's pretty much the definition of manned as far as I'm aware.

Writing it that way makes it sound like they've already achieved the goal, that they're already putting humans into space. Like, if just having it as a goal is sufficient, well heck, I could step onto my lawn tomorrow and declare my household a manned amateur space program.

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 14, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

OtterCoder wrote: post #29

imglorp wrote: post #28

I'm curious how a volunteer organization will achieve the culture and technical maturity to make human rated hardware without a high probability of a horrible death. Think about all the conditions in a long chain of events that must all go right, in a launch, to avoid cooking, freezing, squishing, cratering, asphyxiating, poisoning, exploding, or drowning your crew. After decades of practice, NASA ended up under 1:10…

Maybe that's not their primary goal? People have taken horrifying risks to push frontiers throughout history. The Oregon Trail claimed an estimated 21,000 lives.* Perhaps they are willing to accept a higher risk of death? *Though, despite the horrific toll, the final odds of death on the O.T., once the dust had settled, were about 5% to NASA's ~4%.

Post by igravious » Sun, Oct 14, 2018, 7:34 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #45

13of40 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Copenhagen Suborbitals is the world’s only manned, amateur space program." The way this is phrased, it sounds like they've already achieved it, and I feel like that's a little bit intentional. They could have easily called it an "amateur manned space program", which would have lessened the ambiguity.

They are writing in a second (or third+) language. People learning English have to learn adjective order — it's a big, red bus; not a red, big bus – which could have contributed.