The first commercial rocket to blast off from Canadian soil doesn’t look like much.

Less than five metres tall — not even as tall as a two-storey house — the rocket, dubbed Taiga by its makers at Nordspace, will lift off from a scrubby corner of coastal Newfoundland, just outside the small town of St. Lawrence, about 350 kms southwest of St. John’s. Its maiden voyage is expected to last about a minute, and it won’t even reach orbit.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield calls that a good start.

“I’m really impressed with the way that Nordspace is going about their business,” Hadfield said in an interview with National Post. “Not just building rockets, but also building a launch centre, a launch site, and working with municipal, provincial and federal government, Transport Canada, all the re

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