Updated: Aug. 10, 2012; 5:25 p.m. EDT

A do-it-yourself spaceflight program called Copenhagen Suborbitals hopes to launch a homemade spacecraft 3,000 feet skyward this weekend and broadcast live video of the test.

Strapped inside the cone-shaped spacecraft, a capsule christened "Beautiful Betty," will be a camera-equipped crash-test dummy called Randy – a synthetic stand-in for program co-founders Peter Madsen and Kristian von Bengtson, who writes for Wired's Rocket Shop blog.

"This test is very complex and extremely interesting. In short, we will launch our ... space capsule to an altitude of approximately 800-1,000 meters," von Bengtson wrote in a recent post about the upcoming launch.

Weather permitting, Copenhagen Suborbitals will begin broadcasting live video of the launch in the Baltic Sea, plus a feed from Randy's imperiled vantage, around 3:00 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 12. (Von Bengtson will publish a post containing both live video feeds late Saturday night or early Sunday morning at Wired.com.)

Von Bengtson and his team hope to see an emergency rocket strapped to the top of Beautiful Betty, formerly named Tycho Deep Space, can rescue a passenger during a life-threatening launch failure. The emergency rocket is called Launch Escape System, and it's expected to belch 80 kilonewtons of thrust – more than enough to carry the 6.6-foot-wide, 950-pound capsule and a 150-pound dummy high above the Earth.

Obviously, understanding what happens to Randy is a huge part of the effort. To that end the team placed accelerometers on the dummy to measure the forces exerted on it during the flight.

Another safety test item surrounds the capsule's four big parachutes. Tests of the parachutes both on the ground and with a skydiver produced promising results. But figuring out a way to cram them inside of Betty's top prompted Copenhagen Suborbitals to push her launch back to this weekend.

If all goes as planned, the Launch Escape System will rocket Betty and Randy from a seafaring launch platform, loft them to a height between 2,620 and 3,280 feet and then splash down in the Baltic Sea. At that point self-inflating bags will emerge from Betty and right the floating spacecraft.

The ultimate goal of Copenhagen Suborbitals is to safely launch a person 62 miles above the Earth – an unofficial demarcation line often called suborbital space, or the boundary between our planet and outer space.

The upcoming test of the Launch Escape System follows the launch of a 19-foot-tall hybrid rocket, called SMARAGD-1, which proved a partial success.

"Things are going smoothly here," von Bengtson told Wired. "The capsule is in place and the launch escape system is being assembled and fueled tomorrow."