Update from Copenhagen, where a rocket test tower is being assembled. Headed over in a few months to spend August integrating the space suit with their capsule and its systems, and for a test balloon flight.
"These days the CS crew is working days and nights to prepare the HEAT 2X rocket for its static test. Its been under construction for years, and its liquid propellant engine technology has been tested many times at small scale, and three times at full scale. Now,
it finally a complete rocket stage that hits the test stand.
When that happens the whole test structure from the base to the service crane 21 meters up on the gantry will weigh 160 tonnes.
With is 90 sec burn, we can´t even dream of flying passively stable, so this thing only goes up if we can put a computer at the helm and actively control its trajectory.
So what is this in technical terms ? What have wee build, and what can it do if it works ?
Well, to put it shortly, its a very advanced, complex hypersonic flying machine. It lacks only the turbine pump to have all the key components of the big professional space launchers like the Atlas, Delta, Titan, R7, Proton and so on. And that final component is at the testing stage in the experimental department of CS.
--- Peter Madsen"
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