<\/p>\n The 36-foot rocket lifted off from a private launch facility on Matagorda Island, Texas and flew for 10-and-a-half minutes. It reached an altitude of 195 miles and became the first privately funded rocket to reach space<\/a>.<\/p>\n The only payload on board was 40 gallons of water, which didn’t serve much scientific purpose, but it was ejected from the spacecraft at peak altitude to serve as a visual marker so ground crews could watch.<\/p>\n \n The private Conestoga 1 rocket sits atop its launchpad at Matagorda Island, Texas ahead of its historic Sept. 9, 1982 launch. It was the first privately developed rocket to fly. (Image credit: Space Services Inc.)Why it mattered<\/p>\n Private rocket launches may seem routine today (SpaceX <\/a>alone launches hundreds each year), spaceflight in 1982 was primarily the purview of government agencies like NASA, the U.S. military and other national agencies.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n That changed with the launch of Conestoga 1 by SSIA. The company, led at the time by legendary Mercury 7 and Apollo-Soyuz astronaut Deke Slayton<\/a>, and entreneurs Charles Chafer and David Hannah, Jr., was based in Houston and raised $6 million from 57 supporters to develop their rocket, according to Wired<\/a>. The company initially tried to launch a different type of rocket, called Percheron, in 1981, but it exploded on the pad, according to an account by Inc. magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n SSIA found success three years later with Conestoga 1, a solid-fueled rocket based on an old Minuteman missile second stage (which Wired said SSIA bought from NASA for $365,000). It launched on its suborbital mission from Matagordo Island, Texas, which is about 170 miles (274 km) north of what is now Starbase, Texas<\/a>, home to SpaceX’s Starship megarocket launches.<\/p>\n SSIA would go on to launch another suborbital sounding rocket carrying science experiments in 1989. The company attempted to launch a larger Conestoga rocket (Conestoga 1620), which included additional strap-on boosters, in October 1995 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility<\/a> on Wallops Island, Virginia, but it failed 46 seconds after liftoff, according to NASA<\/a>.<\/p>\n Today, SSIA’s subsidiary Celestis<\/a>, a space funeral company, now offers memorial flights by arranging to fly human cremains into space<\/a> on commercial spaceflights. (SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets have carried some such payloads. Another branch offers informal star naming services.<\/p>\n But the legacy of Conestega 1 lives on today in a robust commercial space launch industry that has seen a number of private companies enter the space marketplace. SpaceX, Blue Origin<\/a>, Virgin Galactic<\/a> and Scaled Composites have even built and flown private astronauts on suborbital (and orbital in SpaceX’s case) missions. SpaceX, meanwhile, has built and launched the largest private rocket on Earth, the Starship and Super Heavy<\/a> booster. It stands over 400 feet tall, is more powerful than NASA’s mighty Saturn V<\/a> moon rocket, and is designed to be fully reusable to allow missions to Earth orbit, the moon and Mars.<\/p>\n Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive<\/a> and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n \nOn this day in space! Sept. 8, 2004: NASA’s Genesis spacecraft crashes in Utah<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Sept. 9, 1982, the first private rocket launched from a Texas cattle ranch. 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