The first test flight, with a crash dummy instead of a human, goes up in eight days, off a floating platform that will be towed into place using a submarine built as the group's previous project.
The members of the group met each other on Something Awful.
It is like the old sci-fi stories from the 1950's, when writers expected that in 2000 space travel would be as common as airplane flight. I think that more private, low budget efforts such as this one could drive expanded space travel development.
So far only huge commercial companies with billions of dollars have attempted such as thing, but that could change with projects such as this one. On the website it says that they plan to release as much of their designs as are allowed under export rules. It would be nice to see more home-brew projects. The danger of course, is that if this space launch fails and somebody dies it could be a Hindenburg for private, low budget space rockets.
I'd like to note the freakin' awesome submarine that is also in the picture. Judging from other comments, I guess that's the homemade submarine these guys made!
Makes me feel ashamed- I have a hard time building a wooden table in my garage. :(
Given that it's suborbital velocities they're aiming for, the return trip is free. (And making it safe is pretty cheap, because there's not much energy to dissipate. The horizontal motion at reentry will be small, as opposed to several times the speed of sound for the space shuttle.)
Homepage:http://www.uc3nautilus.dk/
Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC3_Nautilus
Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hobonerd/sets/72157604823470166...