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Costa Rica's Radical Rocket

Getting to Mars' or anywhere else in the solar system-may be easier with Ad Astra Rocket Co.'s plasma thruster

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Photo: Randi Silberman
HOMEMADE: Loyalty to his roots inspired Franklin Chang Díaz to bring rocketry to Costa Rica. “When I started this company, I was hoping to bring some little piece of it to the developing world, to my country of birth,” says Chang Díaz. “I saw it as a way of saying, Look, the monopolies of knowledge are no longer geographically set in the U.S. or in Europe or Japan.” The response was overwhelming: Now, more than 80 percent of his company is owned by Costa Rican investors.
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