Careful in the winter that you don't get hit by snowballs like Heathcliff here.

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Located in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, St. Luke's Place (a portion of Leroy St.) is a quaint and often photographed block.

Featuring brick and brownstone row houses and antique mayoral lampposts, St. Luke's Place has had many famous residents throughout the years. Edgar Allan Poe used to frequent Walk Park (across the street) in the 1830's, and it was also featured in the film Raging Bull.

The home of the Huxtables' (at least the exterior shots used) in The Cosby Show is 10 St. Luke's Place.

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Founded by the same team that won the Ansari X Prize in 2004, Microsoft gazillionaire Paul G. Allen and Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan started Stratolauch Systems in 2011.

The purpose of Stratolaunch is to create an air launch-to-orbit vehicle for commercial space travel. The company is a joint venture between Scaled Composites (who is creating the carrier aircraft), SpaceX (who is creating the multi-stage launch vehicle, and Dynetics (designing the mating and integration system). Test flight for the aircraft is set for 2015, and test launch of the rocket (a SpaceX Falcon-9) is set for 2016.

Stratolauch Systems, headquartered in Huntsville, AL, does test flights out of the Mojave Air and Spaceport.

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Founded with $100 million by PayPal and Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk, Space Exploration Technologies (more commonly "SpaceX") has grown from its initial investment size in 2002 to become a company with nearly 1,700 employees and an estimated market value of $1.3 billion dollars (an IPO is possible at the end of 2013).

SpaceX became the first private company to successfully launch and return a spacecraft from orbit on December 8 2010, after its Dragon capsule returned from a two-orbit flight.

SpaceX has been specializing in rocket design and manufacture (the "Falcon" series) and capsule design and manufacture (the "Dragon" series). The company will have the first commercial resupply spaceflight to the International Space Station on May 19, 2012.

The company has a launch manifest on their website that gives a hint to the commercial viability to this industry. The US Air Force and NASA are already negotiating contracts with SpaceX.

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Opened as a small airfield serving the gold and silver mining industry in 1935, the Mojave Air and Spaceport (also known as the Civilian Aerospace Test Center) is one of the leading test facilities for the new commercial space flight industry (or "New Space" movement).

Mojave was the first facility to be licensed in the US for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft, being certified as a spaceport by the FAA on June 17, 2004.

Scaled Composites has their headquarters here. Their spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, won the Ansari X Prize (a $10 million prize) by conducting the first privately funded human sub-orbital flight on June 21, 2004.

Not all companies at Mojave are subsidiaries of massive aerospace companies. Masten Space Systems is startup company with 12 employees that specializes in vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) spacecraft.

Other private spaceflight companies based at Mojave include XCOR Aerospace, Firestar Technologies, and Orbital Sciences Corporation.

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