Kristian von Bengston's New Goal: The Moon

Kristian von Bengtson, co-founder of DIY manned space program Copenhagen Suborbitals (which he left in 2014) writes with this pithy plug for his newest venture: "This year, we (a great crew) have been preparing for the next adventure with a mission plan going public Oct 1. Go sign up and join the project at moonspike.com." (You may want to check out our video inteview with von Bengston; he's a person who gets things done.)

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[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Copenhagen Suborbitals is a Danish non-profit aerospace organization that has constructed and launched several privately built rockets

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

It's geeks having fun, and launching a suborbital rocket as a private non-profit doing this for fun is quite an achievement.

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[Teancum]

It would have be an even bigger achievement, if any of the launches had been a success. None of them have reached their goal.

But they have had launches. That is more than I can say about a few other people, including many posting here on slashdot.

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[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Critics don't have to show proof they can do better. I'm pretty sure the overwhelming majority of those who said Star Wars 1 was bad can't produce a better movie.

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[khallow]

And most people on Slashdot don't launch rockets either. It's quite relevant to the argument that someone should receive special consideration because they do launch rockets.

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[SustainableJeroen]

That is not true. All launches so far have been test launches, testing some technology or other. Many flights have not been complete successes, but all have produced valuable data for use further down the line. The two founders leaving CS (and the turmoil leading up to that) have set them back a year or two, but they seem to have regrouped and from the outside it seems as if they're on a much more solid path than before. I've donated $ 25. This weekend they have a (test) launch planned of their Nexø 1

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[Anonymous Coward]

People who "get things done" often are cowboys who disregard things like safety, reliability, employee morale, etc and many times are also bullies.
They are admired in the arena of balls-out capitalism because such tactics often produce good results over the short term at the expense of long term success. Of course these days a long term planning horizon might be a whole calendar year out, and the MBA's who run things don't plan on being around any particular company longer than that ... it's the end resul

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[rasmusbr]

There is not really much of a market for suborbital spaceflight, it's just a few unmanned science experiments each year. I don't think that anyone is ever going to pay $100k to fly on a suborbital joyride either. Perhaps if they can get it down to 20k per ride.

Mun

[hooiberg]

Or bust!

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[R3d M3rcury]

To the Moon, Kristian! To the Moon!

Name the ship?

[A10Mechanic]

If he names the ship 'Alice' I'll consider a donation.

Before I "sign up" with my email address...

[jeffb (2.718)]

...can you at least give me a link to an "About" page? Maybe a paragraph talking about what you're expecting to do? It's a beautiful content-free single-page website, but come on, throw us a bone here.

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[jbengt]

How about just figuring out how to spell his name, the editors can't even seem to get it consistently wrong.

SCAM ALERT

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy Kristian von Bengtson is an advisor of Mars One. Watch your pocketbooks.

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[Teancum]

He is just as duped about Mars One as all of the "spaceflight participants" that have signed up. His involvement there is mainly to make Mars One look good, not the other way around.

Premature much?

[phayes]

You cannot pretend to "Get things done" until you have achieved the promised milestones. Before aiming for the moon he needs to perform a manned suborbital flight to be taken seriously.

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[SustainableJeroen]

Do you know much about the Copenhagen Suborbitals project? They've launched quite a few test rockets over the past couple of years, each a milestone of its own. They launched these from their mobile launch platform from the Baltic Sea, and streamed all them live over the internet. Quite an achievement in itself, I believe. I do agree with you that it's quite a leap from a not-completed suborbital test program to a (manned?) moon landing. I'm curious to see how detailed the information is we'll get to see o

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[phayes]

We have more than enough beautiful drawings and pie in the sky dreams, these do not advance the end goal of having and regularly using cheap manned access to space. Having built & launched the largest amateur rocket is indeed quite an achievement but gives them nowhere near the credibility of what they needs to change his objective from a still unrealized manned suborbital flight to the moon. If he's doing this for himself & just enjoys building castles in the sky, using his own resources, more powe

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[Teancum]

We have more than enough beautiful drawings and pie in the sky dreams, these do not advance the end goal of having and regularly using cheap manned access to space.

These guys are not just making beautiful drawings, and I fail to see how they are not advancing the end goal of having regular and cheap crewed access to space.

I don't know what their end goal actually is, assuming they can actually put capsules into space. I think that issue is something which legitimately needs to be brought up. There is a history of some "open source projects" (Gracenote comes to mind) where once a pile of money starts flowing and the project gets on a firm footing financially that the