WANT to go to space?

You could pay millions to get on board someone else's spacecraft as a tourist, spend six years at uni garnering the relevant NASA qualifications, or hitch-hike aboard the next alien construction fleet that passes through.

Or you could just build your own.

A group of engineers in Denmark are preparing to do just that - launch a home-built rocket, along with a human passenger, more than 100km into the sky.

Dubbed HEAT1X, the rocket will be launched from a floating barge in the sea just outside the Danish border, 12 nautical miles from shore.

And it will be towed out there by a submarine built by one of the men behind the rocket project.

Eccentric engineering genius Peter Madsen lives onboard that homemade submarine, a project that gained him internet fame last year and a Discovery Channel documentary.

Looking to go one up in 2010, Madsen founded Copenhagen Suborbitals with Kristian von Bengston with the aim of building the world's largest amateur space rocket.

Over the last year-and-a-half they have led a team of volunteers to create the HEAT1X rocket and the micro spacecraft it will launch, called Tycho Brahe-1.

Tycho Brahe-1 will carry one human passenger, in a half-seated position, into space and back down again.

The seat is designed to minimise the gravitational pull on the passenger's spine.

Whoever is on board will also have to wear a pressure suit, like those worn by fighter pilots, to make sure they don't pass out.

At the top of the module is a see-through polymer plexiglass dome, giving the astronaut a once-in-a-lifetime view of their journey.

It's planned that the spacecraft will travel in an arc, jettisoning the rocket about halfway up and eventually peaking more than 100km above the Earth before coming down.

After it re-enters the atmosphere, parachutes will be deployed to slow it before it hits the water.

The project is being subsidised by sponsorships and donations from fans.

The team has almost raised its target of €50,000 ($71,250) for the HEAT1X launch scheduled this weekend.

Originally published as Up and away for homemade rocket