Copenhagen Suborbitals currently consists of 50 people — engineers, mathematicians and a kindergarten teacher — who are trying to send a person to space using only off-the-shelf components — the kind you would find in your local hardware store. “All of us have shared the same dream since when we were little kids.
The majority of the team grew up in the seventies and eighties, watching space technologies develop. “For most of us this was all a dream until 2011.” That was the year, he said, that the project’s two founders realised “you could go down to the local hardware store and find almost everything you need to put a rocket into space”.
Four years later, the project is in full swing and there are plans to launch the rocket from a small area in the Baltic Sea. Wilson confesses that it would be much easier to achieve if they could launch from land, but that regulations governing airspace prevent this. After all, Copenhagen Suborbital’s workshop is only around 10 miles from Copenhagen airport. “As you know the land and sea is fairly well regulated, but the air is even worse.” Wilson admits that while the chance of them hitting a plane is probably not that big, “the thought of it is horrifying”.