Open Source Outer Space Anyone with enough brains and balls can
build their own rocket and fly it to space. Or at least that’s
what the nonprofit, open-source space-project Copenhagen
Suborbitals wants the world to realize. Last September, we
scuttled out to Denmark to meet the pioneers behind this new
wave in do-it-yourself space exploration to find out how these
backyard space rockets are made. Founded in 2008 by Kristian von
Bengston and Peter Madsen, Copenhagen Suborbitals is now
comprised of a coterie of 20-plus specialists determined to
create the first homemade, manned spacecraft to go into
suborbital flight. If successful—a manned launch is projected
for sometime in the next few years—Denmark would be the fourth
country in the world, after China, to successfully launch a
manned rocket into space. What’s exceptional about such a feat,
if completed, will be Kristian and Peter's ability to do so on a
shoestring budget of a few hundreds of thousands of dollars,
versus the tens of millions of dollars it co