In the United States, a self-taught amateur has just reproduced the firing and landing of a miniature rocket similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. A seven-year apprenticeship, starting from nothing, punctuated by numerous failures.
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In 2015, Joe Barnard knew absolutely nothing about aeronautics or programming. This resident of Los Angeles, in the United States, has nevertheless challenged himself to achieve a rocket reusable miniature on the model of the Falcon 9 of the society SpaceX. It was through perseverance, fruitless trials and numerous errors that this autodidact managed to land his rocket called Scout F for the first time on July 24th.
The first images of this shooting and this return to Earth have just been broadcast on the YouTube account of Joe Barnard. The enthusiast even created his own company Barnard Propulsion Systems (BPS.space) to share its progress and develop real professional projects around rockets. He now lives off his support, his specialized online store and the advertising revenue generated by the diffusion of his videos on YouTube.
Here is the launch and return of Joe Barnard’s Scout F Miniature Rocket. The autodidact shows in his video how he managed to succeed in his bet by learning through his experiences. © YouTube
A meat rocket?
On the BPS.space site, Joe Barnard explains that he has a university education in music production. Studies rather far from aerospace. Wishing to work in this field, he led this challenge to try to get a job at SpaceX trying to impress them with his scale model.
For the moment, this enthusiast’s launches are limited in altitude, but he aspires to launch his rocket into space suborbital, that is to say at an altitude of almost 100 km. He is now working on a larger rocket model, baptized with the strange name Meat Rocket, which means meat rocket… When asked why he used such a name, Joe Barnard replies that he will not give any clues, but this project is crazy.
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