Copenhagen Suborbitals | Similar organizations | Forum

An offer of friendship email has been sent to Copenhagen Suborbitals today using the above paragraph and the latest offer of friendship template.  I'll let people know when/if they reply.

I have heard back from Peter Madsen of Copenhagen Suborbitals!

Because I want everybody to be in on this as soon as possible, but don't want to risk offending CS by posting the full text of their email here in a public forum without their permission, I will forward a copy of the email to the core team after making this post.  A summary follows for the sake of those who come along later and to direct our discussion of their reply.

In essence, they seem excited and supportive of our efforts and seem quite keen to work with us – he put a few figures about their current hybrid rockets into the email which go a little beyond what is on the website.

Most importantly, they are interested in discerning whether or not we are a bunch of dreamers or committed people and to this end he has offered us the opportunity to visit the Copenhagen Suborbitals workshops, view a static test firing and talk to him about our ideas and ask for advice.  This is a pretty big opportunity for us!

Of course, physically getting to Copenhagen is not necessarily straightforward, but as luck would have it, one of our core members rpulkrabek is from Finland, which is of course quite near Denmark.

He did not seem to explicitly address CS's willingness to become an official Friend of CSTART.  I am not sure if this was due to a language barrier or if it was supposed to be implicit that they will be happy to participate in the project once we prove that we're serious by showing up at their door.

I have replied essentially:

• Confirming that his understanding of CSTART is correct and emphasising that we have a lot in common (with links to the Social Contract and Design Philosophies)
• Expressing gratitude for the hybrid rocket figures they provided.
• Expressing even more gratitude for the offer to visit, saying that we have somebody in Finland who may be able to visit and letting them know that someone will be in contact with them about this in the next few days.

I guess the number one issue is: rpulkrabek, are you willing to visit CS in Denmark if it is at all possible?  Do you think you will be able to do this or will school/work/family committments get in the way?  To the rest of the team: are you willing to chip in some money to help pay for the airfare if necessary?  Are we willing to use some of the $100 raised so far to this end?  There is an issue with this – we have solicited that money for 501(c)(3) purposes.  Nothing legally binding has happened to this end, but it might look bad for us to reuse it for another purpose.  Of course, I suspect many of the people who made those contributions are among the regulars here – would you guys mind if we did this?

This is amazing. Can't wait to hear from other groups!

I am glad to hear you are so keen on a visit!  We could learn an incredible amount by having someone tour CS's workshop and see actual rockets, taking close up photos of everything, asking the CS engineers lots of questions in person and showing them our plans and asking for comments.  Not only this, but simply being able to make a blog post with photos of a CSTART representative on the ground at Copenhagen, shaking hands with the CS guys, will make us look serious and dedicated.

rpulkrabek, I forwaded you all the emails from Peter Madsen, so you have his email address.  Would you like to introduce yourself to him (heads up: I've told him you're Finnish so you may want to clear that up!) and explain the situation a little?  He can give you, I'm sure, more details on their locations and dates of tests, etc.  I don't know whether one of the CS guys would be happy to offer you accommodation or whether you would have to find your own – if you did I am sure some people here would be willing to chip in a little bit to help.

If we do end up going a head with a visit, it would be great if we could have some really good material to show the CS guys upon our revival, both glossy promotional stuff and hard technical details.  Maybe a few free CSTART shirts for the guys as well, if we can get these ready in time.

If you do decide to go, I think it would be prudent to immediately set up a thread or Wiki page called "Questions for CS" that we would all work on making as detailed as possible before you left, to get the most out of the trip.