Peter and Kristian, founders of the Danish rocket association Copenhagen Suborbitals, are struggling to build a rocket that will take them beyond Earth's atmosphere. Peter is a self-taught submarine builder, and Kristian used to work for NASA. Everything in the rocket is homemade, mostly from materials available at any home improvement store.
Director Max Kestner follows the two space amateurs as they pursue their dream of travelling into space. Their first launch attempt took place in 2010 under the eyes of the assembled world media, including reporters from the US, Russia and China. But the rocket just stood there on the launch pad. Nothing happened. The next year, it flew – but horizontally! Then, in 2013, the rocket finally lifted off and soared, actively controlled by a homemade computer program, and this time it went straight up.
Amateurs in Space tracks the two space pioneers' efforts to push through to the sublime despite such everyday stumbling blocks as losing a screwdriver or arguing over whose turn it is to take out the trash. The film is produced by Sigrid Jonsson Dyekjær for Danish Documentary Production. Expected to finish early February 2016.
Amateurs in Space
The two friends, Peter and Kristian, share a boyhood dream of traveling into space in their own home-built space rocket. If they succeed, the two Danes will write themselves into the annals of history as the world's first amateurs to go into space. Peter and Kristian, who are the only people on the project full-time, have gathered a small group of spaceflight enthusiasts who contribute to the project alongside their regular jobs.
