A US company in Houston, Texas, that in 1982 conducted the first successful privately funded commercial rocket launch with its Conestoga rocket. SSI was established by a Texas group that included the former astronaut Deke Slayton, who was its president until his death in 1993. The company constructed its launch pad on Matagorda Island near Corpus Christi, Texas, but its first rocket, the liquid-fuelled Percheron, exploded during a test firing of its engine in 1981. The Conestoga was then developed using solid fuel and made a 10-minute sub-orbital flight in September 1982. It failed, however, to launch NASA's Commercial Experiment Transporter (COMET) in 1995. The company had been bought in 1990 by EER Systems, which was then merged in 2003 into Government Services Inc.