Daring First Homemade Space Rocket In History!

A group of privately financed Danish space enthusiasts have taken another step towards their goal of launching the first Dane into space, successfully testing their planned rocket's main engine.

According to ItnSource.com, Copenhagen Suborbital has carried out several tests on smaller rocket engines and the projects founders, Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen have now moved on to start tests on their HEAT-4 motor which they are hope will eventually power a one-man rocket 100km into space. The HEAT-4 rocket, or Hybrid Exo Atmospheric Transporter, is a microsized spacecraft in which the astronaut will be strapped to a seat and only able to move their head and arms, but will have a magnificent view of Earth through the glass dome on top of the rocket.
The daring project has made both Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen semi-celebrities in Denmark and they are working full time on finally launching one of them into space.

"You're going to lie in there looking out of this window. And you're going to have really a 360 degree visibility all around you. And it's simply going to be the craziest elevator, you know, escalator ride in all history, seeing the whole atmosphere of Earth passing in just 60 seconds - when you accelerate from zero to 5700 kilometres per hour," said Madsen.

Both the HEAT-4 and the smaller HATV rockets in the Copenhagen Suborbital campaign are hybrid, liquid and solid fuel rockets, using a mix of epoxy and nitrous oxide, more commonly known as laughing gas. This last component will eventually be exchanged for liquid oxygen in the final stages of the tests. Hybrid rockets holds several advantages over both liquid rockets and solid rockets especially in terms of simplicity, safety, and costs, according to space physicist and president of the Danish Astronautical society, Steen Eiler Jorgensen.