Space cowboys: The maverick pioneers of galactic travel | Space

The 1987 order from the German government was clear: Shut down your operations in Libya. For Lutz Kayser, this marked the heartbreaking finale to his private rocketry enterprise, OTRAG, and to his dream of “making access to space affordable for everyone”.

Founded in Germany and based, in a series of bizarre turns, first in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and then deep in the Libyan desert, OTRAG had developed an IKEA-like concept for rocket design, using mass-produced…