Some days ago I had the pleasure of doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) which was much fun. At the same time, it was a challenge providing short and concise answers to the many questions bombarding me for almost two hours.

I know many at the AMA-session had never heard about Copenhagen Suborbitals before, and didn’t quite understand how we work and how we are able to keep the research and development cost at a very low level. At the time of the AMA-session, it was impossible for me to go into all the details – so, this blog is dedicated to sharing a little more information on these matters.

We are working with an open-source approach that states “absolutely no rights reserved.” This also applies to budgets and spending, but for now I will focus on the dogmas of our R&D methods.

(Regarding our budget, I intend to share all numbers with you very soon. I have no clear picture of the numbers but believe we have a budget of approximately $200,000 a year – or the equivalent of the monthly coffee budget of NASA.)

Dogmas, rules of engagement and general thoughts

Our mission is to launch a human being into space. Not to invent or discover new technologies or justify our existence as incubators for businesses or companies to evolve their capabilities, like NASA or ESA. We stand on the shoulders of giants and dig deep into the vast ocean of knowledge in which we are floating (sometimes almost drowning).

This project is not possible without the Internet, which provides both knowledge and general outreach to all of you. Naturally, we seek as much information as possible on all matters in this space endeavor, and even ask readers for solutions and ideas. The globe is packed with brilliant minds like you. Work it right, and the open source approach becomes mightily powerful.

I believe great solutions and contributions also imply removal of ideas and systems instead of adding more. In short: tell me what I can remove instead of adding. I guess it is a part of human nature to add “something” if we want to feel like contributors, but that’s far from the truth.

We aim to keep all research and development in house. If we do not have the capabilities of working the problems ourselves we might end up being in the mercy of someone else which may cause delays and major issues when changing ideas and focus. Only in rare cases does work happen outside our facility. Needles to say, this does not apply to laser cutting and third party production services.

We build our engines and capsules using “ordinary” materials like plain carbon steel and aluminum. If your engine has enough power to get you above the Karman-line why bother optimize your hardware which will only double the development time and result in an exponential growth in cost. You can build a big dumb rocket for little money or a smaller optimized for the usual manned-spaceflight-budget, known from government space projects and large companies.

We always try finding off the shelf products for any solution like regular valves, pipes and electronics. No need to invent your own systems if you can find it cheap and reliable around the corner. It seem difficult to many people to “downgrade” spaceflight with solutions that might seem ridiculous. Maybe it’s a cultural thing related to spaceflight? E.g we use pilates-balls for uprighting bags, cork (from a carpet shop) as heat shield, club soda CO2 bottles for uprighting bag inflation, plumbing valves for the engines etc. Why not?

In rare cases we might come up with radical or new solutions and maybe even new technologies, but only if we are cornered and could not find a simpler solution to a certain problem. Some systems are tweaked and hacked to work exactly as we want them to. But the foundation of those solutions are still off-the-shelf products.

Most measurements for rocket and capsule geometry are based on standard metal sheet plates and tubes. The 64 cm diameter of the HEAT-1X and HEAT-2X rocket is based on bending a 2 meter standard metal sheet plate. The diameter of the Sapphire and Smaragd rocket is based on a standard metal tube. Building your final solution on existing products is fast and cheap compared to entirely specialized designs.

We move fast from ideas, sketching to production and testing. Most times it is the same persons taking care of all these processes. Instead of having segregated departments who require special documentation for further development, we are all a part of the same production team.

We believe it is more important to create prototypes sooner than later. Instead of drawing and calculating for ever we build, test and evaluate as the first step, resulting in a very fast turn around period for all R&D areas.

We will always replace electronic based solutions with mechanical systems, if possible. No need to read the internal pressure of a tank or capsule on a digital display if you can use an old fashion manometer.

We are working a grey-zone project. So far, we haven’t found any rules and regulations for home made space rockets, providing us with somewhat free hands. This is not a commercial project requiring government approval and check-out. We set the standards ourselves, which has a tremendous effect on the usual costly red tape of any development project. However, we know that if we mess up, we might end up setting the wrong standards for future projects. We respect the dangers, especially for third parties.

Contrary to what most people actually believe, building a space rocket is mostly a matter or bending and welding metals. It is important to have a correct balance of black smiths and astrophysicists. Too many ideas and PhD´s can be harmful for a project like this.

Remember that ambitions and ideas are useless until put into practice..

Ad Astra

Kristian von Bengtson

Image credits: Sonny Windstrup, Thomas Pedersen, Jev Olsen