Copenhagen Suborbitals: 'Beautiful Betty' Space Capsule LES Test

Watch live streaming video from csscph at livestream.com

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

Watch live streaming video from cssaarhus at livestream.com

Strapped inside the cone-shaped spacecraft, a capsule christened “Beautiful Betty,” with a camera-equipped crash-test dummy called Randy — a synthetic stand-in for program co-founders Peter Madsen and Kristian von Bengtson.

“This test was very complex and extremely interesting. In short, we launched our space capsule to an altitude of approximately 800-1,000 meters,” von Bengtson reports.

Copenhagen Suborbitals began 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 and his team wanted to see if an emergency rocket strapped to the top of Beautiful Betty, formerly named Tycho Deep Space, could rescue a passenger during a life-threatening launch failure.

The emergency rocket is called Launch Escape System, and it has 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 so, 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 delays in configuring the chutes, prompted Copenhagen Suborbitals to push her launch back to this weekend.

The Launch Escape System rocketed Betty and Randy from a seafaring launch platform, lifting them to a height between 2,620 and 3,280 feet and then splashing down in the Baltic Sea.

At that point self-inflating bags emerged from Betty and righted 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 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 confidently stated.