Although reaching the space has traditionally required budgets of millions of dollars, it is increasingly common for private companies, universities and even individuals to carry out this feat with increasingly affordable budgets .
While small fuel engines offer plenty of lift, cheaper rocket models generally sacrifice altitude or acceleration. The Apogee Aspire can provide both for a price ranging from 50 euros. To the point that it is capable of breaking the sound barrier and exceeding 1.6 kilometers in height.
Apogee Aspire
A cardboard fuselage minimizes the weight of this 73-centimeter rocket to maximize its efficiency. The laser-cut fins provide smooth edges on the fuselage that allow for greater aerodynamics. In turn, a metal strap attached with a Kevlar cord makes it easy to track the rocket through its journey and recovery after landing.
With a faster-burning fuel source, the Aspire easily exceeds the speed of sound . It reaches Mach 1 (1,225 kilometers per hour) when it passes 60 meters in height.
Finally, the Apogee reaches a maximum height of approximately 1.6 kilometers.
Apogee is still a toy, but precisely because of this it shows to what extent rocketry has been developed. This is precisely what was going to allow the adventurer Mike Hughes to reach 1,520 meters of height to check if the Earth was flat, something of which he was convinced. His project, which ultimately ended in disaster, had been financed only with the collection of about 15,600 euros from the denialist association The Flat Earth Society .
A little beyond homemade rockets, private companies and universities have already launched the race to send nanosatellites into space . Nanosatellites have a mass of between 1 and 10 kg, compared to hundreds or even thousands of kilograms for a typical commercial satellite. Nanosatellites are launched into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) because less energy is required to locate them.
Launching a satellite has a highly variable cost: between 50 and 500 million dollars, depending on the size. As of November 2013, there were only 75 nanosatellites , but today they number in the hundreds. In 2015, Interorbital Systems, a California company, even carried out a suborbital test flight of a small rocket designed to carry a 145 kg payload.
This progressive reduction in prices means that many of those involved in the construction of rockets and satellite launches are individuals or small companies whose philosophy is based on the maker movement or DIY ( Do It Yourself ), the ability to create from open developments of others or even commercial products and share them with others.
Flying into space is getting cheaper. That is why, in 2004, the Ansari Xprize was presented, the award given by the X Prize Foundation consisting of 10 million dollars to encourage research on tourist flights into space. In the wake of the Ansari Xprice’s success, many investors are taking human spaceflight seriously. Perhaps a cheap toy will appear soon to achieve them.
