Seven years ago, three classmates at the Technical University of Munich believed their student engineering project might hold some promise in the private sector.
At the time, Daniel Metzler led a team of 40 students working on rocket engines and launching sounding rockets. Josef Fleischmann was on the team that won the first SpaceX Hyperloop competition. Together with another classmate, Markus Brandl, they crafted rocket parts in a campus workshop before taking the leap and establishing Isar Aerospace, named for the river running through the Bavarian capital.
Now, Isar's big moment has arrived. The company's orbital-class first rocket, named Spectrum, is set to lift off from a shoreline launch pad in Norway as soon as this week.
