Human Cannonball Astronaut: My Rocket Is My Clothes [Rocketry]

Within weeks, Peter Madsen and Kristian von Bengtson will launch the first standing-room-only spacecraft. Their rocket is a cylindrical capsule that snugly fits around a standing person, with a clear plexiglass dome so that the astronaut can see out.

For this first test flight, Madsen and von Bengtson – founders of the non-profit organisation Copenhagen Suborbitals in Denmark – will put a dummy within the crew compartment and hope to send it 20 kilometres above Earth’s surface. Their aim, however, is to take advantage of the craft to boost people to heights of 120 kilometres, making it the first Danish rocket to get to space – and the smallest crewed spacecraft ever launched.

Rocket hobbyists have raised doubts about whether the minimalist rocket will remain upright on its way up, but by anyone’s standards, it’s a daring mission. New Scientist asked Madsen, who has volunteered to be the first passenger, why he wants to embark on this kind of journey.

Why build a human cannonball rather then a more conventional rocket?

Traditionally, astronauts are launched into space lying on their backs. Which means that you’ve high g-tolerance [can withstand large accelerations], however it’s very expensive because it needs a relatively large rocket booster. What we’ve done, that is very controversial, is to assert, ” Let’s put this man standing.”

This gives us loads of benefits. The rocket becomes an awful lot smaller – it’s only 65 centimetres in diameter – and therefore lighter. Second, it gives the astronaut the visual experience of leaving Earth and travelling up throughout the atmosphere. This has never happened within the history of space flight.

But how does the standing astronaut survive?

We can favor to design our rocket engines to show the standing astronaut only to limited g-loads, on the order of 3 to 4 g [three to four times the effect of Earth's gravity] – and only through the first 20 seconds of the flight. That’s lower than you expose yourself to in a rollercoaster.

We have already used a ” human centrifuge” here in Copenhagen to show people to 5.5 to 6.5 gs. It was crystal clear that this kind of g load, at this level and for this time frame, is relatively uncritical to our astronaut.

Will this be the smallest spacecraft ever to carry an astronaut?

You should consider our spacecraft as something different. The vessel have to be considered like clothes, and the nose-cone a helmet that protects you from the vacuum of space. It’s a really different form of space flight; the person is submerged within the cosmos.

How are you reducing the danger of riding in the sort of minimal spacecraft?

This is really an exceptionally cautious strategy in developing spacecraft. In case you look back to the 1980s, the very first NASA shuttle flight was manned. We do not put people’s lives at stake in test flight; we’ve got an unmanned vehicle that flies again and again until we are certain that it’s reasonably safe. You fix those weak spots and fly again until you reach the point that it will possibly take the complete flight without damage. Doing it any opposite direction could be seeking to learn how to drink from a hearth hose.

Could this kind of human cannonball replace conventional rockets?

It is potentially safer. Personally I feel that wings belong, which includes landing gear and flight instrumentation, within the Earth’s atmosphere. After you’re outside the Earth’s atmosphere, you want to build vehicles which are designed for that environment. Wings don’t belong in space. And pilots don’t belong in space. That’s why we built a spacecraft which could – forgive the expression – be flown by a monkey.

So the astronaut has very little control?

Humans can only feel so much and notice so much and realize it. You’ve gotten 10 minutes or 5 minutes in weightlessness, and so we’ve got made our craft completely independent of the astronaut’s activity. He’s not doing anything with the spacecraft; he’s not flying it in any respect. He’s there as an observer. We’ve got a joystick to manage the angle of the capsule, so the astronaut could turn it around and look in a unique direction when he is in space.

Your collaborator called Tycho Brahe 1 an ” elaborate art project” . Art usually has a message – what is yours?

I suppose it is dependent upon your interpretation of what art is, but one of several things that art can do is that it will probably open your eyes. Hopefully this mission will give everybody watching an experience of joy, through realising that such things are possible. You may go home and build your individual personal spacecraft – that’s an even message.

New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the consequences of human endeavour set within the context of society and culture, providing comprehensive coverage of science and technology news.

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This post is tagged: astronaut, Cannonball, Clothes, rocket, rocketry