A group of spaceflight enthusiasts hope to break the government and industry stranglehold on the "final frontier" this weekend by becoming the first amateur organization to ever launch a rocket into space.
JP Aerospace, a 70-member group, hopes to launch a 17-pound (7.7-kilogram) rocket to an altitude of 60.6 miles (97 kilometers) on either Saturday or Sunday. Experts generally consider space to begin above 57.5 miles (92.5 kilometers).
"No totally independent group has ever ridden into space," said John Powell, a Davis, California programmer who is president of the space group that bears his initials.
The JP Aerospace effort will use a three-tiered stack made up of a dozen weather balloons (shown above during an earlier test) to hoist the launch platform to an altitude of 19 miles (30 kilometers) above the Black Rock Desert in Northern Nevada.
Lifting off at dawn on Saturday Sunday if the weather does not cooperate the balloons will take 90 minutes to reach altitude.
At that point, the 7.3-foot (2.2-meter) rocket will be ignited and zoom upward, reaching a velocity of Mach 3.5 after a speedy five-second burn. A video camera is mounted on a boom.
"The rest is just coast," Powell said of the rocket effort that has been seven years in the making. "It just moves."
At peak altitude, the rocket will deploy a parachute and float back to Earth. GPS receivers will track the rocket and verify the altitude it reaches.
During a previous attempt on May 1999, JP Aerospace succeeded in launching a rocket to nearly 14 miles (22 kilometers) from a 5-mile (8-kilometer) high balloon-raised platform.
And yet another attempt, already slated for July, could win JP Aerospace a hefty prize as well as further prestige.
The Space Frontier Foundation, a Nyack, New York-based organization that advocates the settlement of space, is offering a $250,000 prize to the first amateur group that can launch a 4.4-pound (2-kilogram) payload to 124 miles (200 kilometers).
James George, the groups executive director, said JP Aerospace might well capture the money before the CATS thats "Cheap Access To Space" contest ends on November 8.
"Were hoping they will be the ones to break the barrier and win the prize," George said.
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