In the United States, a self-taught amateur rocket enthusiast has just reproduced the launch and landing of a miniature Falcon 9 rocket. A seven-year apprenticeship, starting from nothing, punctuated by numerous failures.
In 2015, Joe Barnard knew absolutely nothing about aeronautics or programming. This resident of Los Angeles, in the United States, has nevertheless set himself the challenge of making a reusable miniature rocket on the model of the Falcon 9 from the company 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 Joe Barnard’s YouTube account. The enthusiast even created his own company Barnard Propulsion Systems (BPS.space) to share his progress and develop real professional projects around rockets.
He now lives on his support, his specialized online store and the advertising revenue generated by the distribution of his videos on YouTube.
His New Project: The “Meat Rocket”
On the BPS.space site, Joe Barnard explains that he has a university education in music production. Studies rather distant from aerospace. Wanting to work in this field, he led this challenge to try to get a job at SpaceX seeking to impress them with his scale model.
For the moment, the launches of this enthusiast are limited in altitude, but he aspires to launch his rocket into suborbital space, that is to say at an altitude of nearly 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.
