Musk has stated that one of his goals with SpaceX is to decrease the cost and improve the reliability of access to space, ultimately by a factor of ten. Musk personally interviewed and approved all of SpaceX's early employees. By November 2005, the company had 160 employees. Early SpaceX employees, such as Tom Mueller (CTO), Gwynne Shotwell (COO), and Chris Thompson (VP of Operations), came from neighboring TRW and Boeing corporations following the cancellation of the Brilliant Pebbles program. SpaceX was first headquartered in a warehouse in El Segundo, California. Mueller agreed to work for Musk, and thus SpaceX was born.
Musk approached rocket engineer Tom Mueller (later SpaceX's CTO of propulsion) and invited him to become his business partner. In early 2002, Musk started to look for staff for his company, soon to be named SpaceX. Griffin would later be appointed NASA administrator, conceive the COTS program, and approve SpaceX for the $278 million award in 2006 before SpaceX had flown any rockets.
#Double moon shelf factory software#
By applying vertical integration, using cheap commercial off-the-shelf components when possible, and adopting the modular approach of modern software engineering, Musk believed SpaceX could significantly cut launch price. On the flight home Musk announced he could start a company to build the affordable rockets they needed instead. When Musk returned to Moscow, Russia, with Michael Griffin (who led the CIA's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel ), they found the Russians increasingly unreceptive. Two months later, however, the United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty and created the Missile Defense Agency, increasing tensions with Russia and generating new strategic interest for rapid and re-usable launch capability similar to the DC-X. Musk initially attempted to acquire a Dnepr ICBM for the project through Russian contacts from Jim Cantrell. : 30–31 He gave a plenary talk at their fourth convention where he announced Mars Oasis, a project to land a greenhouse and grow plants on Mars. In early 2001, Elon Musk donated US$100,000 to the Mars Society and joined its board of directors for a short time. See also: List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches 2001–2004: Founding The companies Falcon 9 rockets have landed and reflown more than 170 times. It is also the first organization of any type to achieve a vertical propulsive landing of an orbital rocket booster and the first to reuse such a booster. SpaceX is the first private company to develop a liquid-propellant rocket that has reached orbit to launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station and to send astronauts to the International Space Station. Starship is intended to become SpaceX's primary orbital vehicle, supplanting the existing Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon fleet. On its failed first flight in April 2023, it became the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown. The company is also developing Starship, a fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch system for interplanetary and orbital spaceflight. The company offers commercial satellite-based internet service via its constellation of Starlink satellites, which became the largest-ever satellite constellation in January 2020 and as of June 2023 comprised more than 4,300 small satellites in orbit. The company manufactures the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Starship heavy-lift launch vehicles, the Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon spacecrafts, the Starlink mega-constellation satellite and rocket engines. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and to colonize Mars.
The Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launch service provider and satellite communications company headquartered in Hawthorne, California, United States.
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