Three people were killed and three others critically injured in an explosion at a California rocket-testing facility yesterday.
The blast occurred at the Mojave Air and Space Port, where Scaled Composites, the company formed by commercial spaceflight pioneer Burt Rutan was testing a rocket motor.
Television images showed wrecked equipment and vehicles and blackened ground from the blast, which involved the highly flammable gas nitrous oxide.
Mr Rutan, who has partnered with Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen and British airline tycoon Richard Branson to form a space tourism company, largely bases his company at the airfield.
In 2004 Mr Rutan's SpaceShipOne, a stubby, three-seat rocket plane, made the world's first privately funded manned spaceflight.
The Mojave Airport opened in 1935 as a small rural airfield serving the local gold and silver mining industry and was taken over by the US Marine Corps in 1942 as a military base. It was returned to civilian use in 1961.
