P.M. BRIEFING : 1st Commercial Rocket Goes Aloft
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WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. — The era of private space travel was launched today when the nation’s first licensed commercial rocket, carrying six experiments, soared into the sky for a brief suborbital flight and its payload parachuted back to Earth.
Starfire 1, owned by Space Services Inc. of America, a small Houston company run by developer David Hannah Jr. and Mercury 7 astronaut Deke Slayton, blasted off into clear blue skies at 8:40 a.m. from White Sands Missile Range.
The flight was paid for by the Consortium for Materials Development in Space at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Ala. The cost was $1.1 million.
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