Costa Rica’s first rocket technologies laboratory has been built and masterminded by 57 year-old former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, launching a private venture to build a plasma-powered rocket engine capable of sending a shuttle into space cheaper and quicker than conventional models.
The $3.5m lab, funded mostly by Costa Rican investors, has been built in Guanacaste and Chang-Diaz hopes to put hydrogen or argon fueled plasma-powered rockets into space by 2010 and see them fly to Mars by 2025. It is hoped that the lab will form the basis of a high-tech research centre and the Silicon Valley of Costa Rica, bringing jobs and an improved financial position to the area.
Chang-Diaz clearly sees his country as a land of opportunity as he comments, $quot;I think this is a country small enough that it can be changed. It’s not as difficult as changing the United States or the Soviet Union.$quot;
Rocket technology
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