SpaceX

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an American space technology company headquartered at the Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the company has made numerous advances in rocket propulsion, reusable launch vehicles, human spaceflight and satellite constellation technology. As of 2025^[update], SpaceX is the world's dominant space launch provider, its launch cadence eclipsing all others, including private competitors and national programs like the Chinese space program. SpaceX, NASA, and the United States Armed Forces work closely together by means of governmental contracts.

SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with a vision of decreasing the costs of space launches, paving the way to a self-sustaining colony on Mars. In 2008, Falcon 1 successfully launched into orbit after three failed launch attempts. The company then moved towards the development of the larger Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon 1 capsule to satisfy NASA's COTS contracts for deliveries to the International Space Station. By 2012, SpaceX finished all COTS test flights and began delivering Commercial Resupply Services missions to the International Space Station. Also around that time, SpaceX started developing hardware to make the Falcon 9 first stage reusable. The company demonstrated the first successful first-stage landing in 2015 and re-launch of the first stage in 2017. Falcon Heavy, built from three Falcon 9 boosters, first flew in 2018 after a more than decade-long development process. As of May 2025, the company's Falcon 9 rockets have landed and flown again more than 450 times, reaching 1–3 launches a week.

These milestones delivered the company much-needed investment and SpaceX sought to diversify its sources of income. In 2019, the first operational satellite of the Starlink internet satellite constellation came online. In subsequent years, Starlink generated the bulk of SpaceX's income and paved the way for its Starshield military counterpart. In 2020, SpaceX began to operate its Dragon 2 capsules to deliver crewed missions for NASA and private entities. Around this time, SpaceX began building test prototypes for Starship, which is the largest launch vehicle in history and aims to fully realize the company's vision of a fully reusable, cost-effective and adaptable launch vehicle. SpaceX is also developing its own space suit and astronaut via its Polaris program as well as developing the human lander for lunar missions under NASA's Artemis program. SpaceX is not publicly traded; a space industry newspaper estimated that SpaceX has a revenue of over $10 billion in 2024.

In early 2001, Elon Musk met Robert Zubrin and donated $100,000 to his Mars Society, joining its board of directors for a short time. 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. Musk initially attempted to acquire a Dnepr launch vehicle for the project through Russian contacts from Jim Cantrell.

Musk returned with his team to Moscow, this time bringing Michael Griffin, who later became the 11th Administrator of NASA, but found the Russians increasingly unreceptive. On the flight home, Musk announced he could start a company to build the affordable rockets they needed instead. By applying vertical integration, using inexpensive commercial off-the-shelf components when possible, and adopting the modular approach of modern software engineering, Musk believed SpaceX could significantly cut launch costs.

In early 2002, Elon Musk started to look for staff for his company, soon to be named SpaceX. Musk approached five people for the initial positions at the fledgling company, including Griffin, who declined the position of Chief Engineer, Jim Cantrell and John Garvey (Cantrell and Garvey later founded the company Vector Launch), rocket engineer Tom Mueller, and Chris Thompson. SpaceX was first headquartered in a warehouse in El Segundo, California. Early SpaceX employees, such as Tom Mueller (CTO), Gwynne Shotwell (COO), and Chris Thompson (VP of Operations), came from neighboring TRW and Boeing corporations. By November 2005, the company had 160 employees. Musk personally interviewed and approved all of SpaceX's early employees.

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.

SpaceX developed its first orbital launch vehicle, the Falcon 1, with internal funding. The Falcon 1 was an expendable two-stage-to-orbit small-lift launch vehicle. The total development cost of Falcon 1 was approximately $90 million to $100 million.