Amateurs in Space

Peter Madsen is currently being investigated for the murder of a female Swedish journalist on board his submarine, including very weird and unpleasant details that I do not have to write down here. They are everywhere on the internet anyway. This crime is discussed everywhere in Sweden and Denmark since it took place in mid-August this year, and it was my curiosity about Peter Madsen that made me look for this movie. I am not really into rocket science! So for me it was only positive that so much in the movie was about the man, rather than about the technology.

One could say against the movie that it is episodic, that its continuity is not so good - but maybe it was the intention of the film-maker to deliver only bits-and-pieces here-and-there from Madsen's and von Bengtson's joint project? Be that as maybe, it was very interesting to get this insight into Madsen - now when everybody in Scandinavia is trying to understand and come to terms with what happened on that submarine in the night 10-11 August...

I think it was a great pity that the female journalist did not do her research properly before meeting her interview subject, because if she had watched this film she might have been warned by his behaviour here, and by the head injury and all his friends urging him to have his head examined - and never gone underwater alone with him. Another thought: if the doctor in the movie had done a more thorough job, when Madsen himself was in fact asking for help, maybe Madsen could have received treatment for his obvious psychiatric problems earlier, and in that case the tragedy would probably not have happened either. There are many "if only:s" in that terrible story!

I would not recommend this movie to anyone who is primarily interested in the work of Copenhagen Suborbitals, because they have themselves made much better informative movies that you can see for free at Youtube. But if you are interested in Peter Madsen as a person, during the years that led up to him becoming "Murder-Madsen" as he is often called now instead of his old nickname "Rocket-Madsen", this is a must-see. (You learn a little about the Danish and American rockets as well.)

It's always interesting to see documentaries on people trying to realize their dream, especially if it is about people wanting to build a rocket for space-travel. However, you would expect from such a space tale to work towards a glorious technical achievement and show the involved people. Not so here. This documentary more and more turns into a continuous stream of arguments revolving around the two main characters, eventually leading to them abandoning the project altogether. One of them, Peter Madsen, is portrayed as one of the big troublemakers. To see the documentary slide into a soap opera is a big disappointment, and the ending is not a closure.

I watched this documentary only to find out afterwards that the same Peter Madsen is currently under investigation for murder on a female journalist who traveled with him on his submarine, and whose dismembered body was recently found. That makes watching this documentary to see how he acted very weird...