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Black Sea Adventurers Plan Reed Boat Trip to Egypt

A team, led by German explorer Dominique Goertlitz, assembles a 14-meter long reed boat in the town of Beloslav, Bulgaria, July 3, 2019. Picture taken July 3, 2019. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
A team, led by German explorer Dominique Goertlitz, assembles a 14-meter long reed boat in the town of Beloslav, Bulgaria, July 3, 2019. Picture taken July 3, 2019. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
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Black Sea Adventurers Plan Reed Boat Trip to Egypt

A team, led by German explorer Dominique Goertlitz, assembles a 14-meter long reed boat in the town of Beloslav, Bulgaria, July 3, 2019. Picture taken July 3, 2019. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
A team, led by German explorer Dominique Goertlitz, assembles a 14-meter long reed boat in the town of Beloslav, Bulgaria, July 3, 2019. Picture taken July 3, 2019. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov

Adventurers are getting ready to set off on a 3,000-km voyage in a reed boat to test a theory that ancient Egyptian merchants used such as vessels to travel as far as the Black Sea, Reuters reported.

A crew led by German explorer Dominique Goеrlitz is planning to leave the Black Sea port of Varna next month, then try to island-hop around the Aegean and cross the Mediterranean to Alexandria.

The boat Abora IV is still being built in the nearby town of Beloslav, with the help of two members of the Aymara ethnic group from Bolivia - Fermin Limachi and his son Yuri who have flown in to share their expertise using the fragile material.

According to Reuters, Goеrlitz said the Ancient Greek historian Heroditus had cited even older sources suggesting Egyptians "sailed into the Black Sea, to get precious materials they could not find in the Eastern Mediterranean".

The accounts were supported, he said, by the discovery of Egyptian remains around the Black Sea.

Other members of the Aymara group, who live on Lake Titicaca high in the Andes, were involved in earlier Abora expeditions to other destinations and helped Norwegian writer Thor Heyerdahl, who crossed the Pacific in the "Kon-Tiki" balsa-reed raft in 1947.

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Private European Aerospace Startup Completes 1st Test Flight of Orbital Launch Vehicle

In this photo taken from video provided by Isar Aerospace, Photo Wingmen Media, Isar Aerospace test rocket "Spectrum" explodes felling back down after the launch at Andoya Spaceport in Nordmela, on Andøya island, Norway, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (Isar Aerospace, Photo Wingmen Media via AP)
In this photo taken from video provided by Isar Aerospace, Photo Wingmen Media, Isar Aerospace test rocket "Spectrum" explodes felling back down after the launch at Andoya Spaceport in Nordmela, on Andøya island, Norway, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (Isar Aerospace, Photo Wingmen Media via AP)
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Private European Aerospace Startup Completes 1st Test Flight of Orbital Launch Vehicle

In this photo taken from video provided by Isar Aerospace, Photo Wingmen Media, Isar Aerospace test rocket "Spectrum" explodes felling back down after the launch at Andoya Spaceport in Nordmela, on Andøya island, Norway, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (Isar Aerospace, Photo Wingmen Media via AP)
In this photo taken from video provided by Isar Aerospace, Photo Wingmen Media, Isar Aerospace test rocket "Spectrum" explodes felling back down after the launch at Andoya Spaceport in Nordmela, on Andøya island, Norway, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (Isar Aerospace, Photo Wingmen Media via AP)

A rocket by a private European aerospace company launched from Norway on Sunday and crashed into the sea 30 seconds later.
Despite the short test flight, Isar Aerospace said that it successfully completed the first test flight of its orbital launch vehicle by launching its Spectrum rocket from the island of Andøya in northern Norway.
The 28-meter-long (92-foot-long) Spectrum is a two-stage launch vehicle specifically designed to put small and medium satellites into orbit. The rocket lifted off from the pad at 12:30 p.m. (1030 GMT) Sunday and flew for about a half-minute before the flight was terminated, The Associated Press quoted Isar as saying.
“This allowed the company to gather a substantial amount of flight data and experience to apply on future missions,” Isar said in a statement. “After the flight was terminated at T+30 seconds, the launch vehicle fell into the sea in a controlled manner.”
Video from the launch shows the rocket taking off from the pad, flying into the air and then coming back down to crash into the sea in a fiery explosion.
The launch was subject to various factors, including weather and safety, and Sunday's liftoff followed a week of poor conditions, including a scrubbed launch on March 24 because of unfavorable winds, and on Saturday for weather restrictions.
“Our first test flight met all our expectations, achieving a great success,” Daniel Metzler, Isar’s chief executive and co-founder, said in the statement. “We had a clean liftoff, 30 seconds of flight and even got to validate our Flight Termination System.”
The company had largely ruled out the possibility of the rocket reaching orbit on its first complete flight, saying that it would consider a 30-second flight a success. Isar Aerospace aims to collect as much data and experience as possible on the first integrated test of all the systems on its in-house-developed launch vehicle.
Isar Aerospace is separate from the European Space Agency, or ESA, which is funded by its 23 member states.
“Success to get off the pad, and lots of data already obtained. I am sure @isaraerospace will learn a lot," ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher posted on X. "Rocket launch is hard. Never give up, move forward with even more energy!”