Private Funding
The Falcon 1 rocket was developed with private funding. The only other orbital launch vehicle to be privately funded and developed is the Pegasus, first launched in 1990; however, it requires a large aircraft as its first stage.
While the development of Falcon 1 was privately funded, the first two Falcon 1 launches were purchased by the United States Department of Defense under a program that evaluates new US launch vehicles suitable for use by DARPA.
Read more about this topic: Falcon 1
Famous quotes containing the word private:
“The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)