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First Private, Manned Spaceship Set to Launch Hundreds of people are camped out in a dusty lot on a desert airport in California. They've come to see what they say will be a bit of history--this morning's launch of the first privately funded spaceship. The craft won't reach orbit, but it will try to fly to an impressive altitude of 60 miles where the blue line of the horizon separates the blackness of space from the earth below. NPR's David Kestenbaum reports.

First Private, Manned Spaceship Set to Launch

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First Private, Manned Spaceship Set to Launch

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Hundreds of people are camped out in a dusty lot on a desert airport in California. They've come to see what they say will be a bit of history—this morning's launch of the first privately funded spaceship. The craft won't reach orbit, but it will try to fly to an impressive altitude of 60 miles where the blue line of the horizon separates the blackness of space from the earth below. NPR's David Kestenbaum reports.