SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. As of November 2017, the company had grown to nearly 7,000, and was 8,000 in May 2020. The company has over 100 launches on its manifest representing about $12 billion in contract revenue.
About SpaceX in brief
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. SpaceX has flown 20 cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station under a partnership with NASA, as well as an uncrewed demonstration flight of the human-rated Dragon 2 spacecraft on 2 March 2019. In December 2015, a Falcon 9 accomplished a propulsive vertical landing. In March 2017, SpaceX became the first to successfully re-launch and land the first stage of an orbital rocket. In January 2020, with the third launch of the Starlink project, SpaceX becomes the largest commercial satellite constellation operator in the world. In September 2016, Musk unveiled the Interplanetary Transport System — subsequently renamed Starship — a privately funded launch system to develop spaceflight technology for use in crewed interplanetary spaceflight. Starship is planned to be fully reusable and will be the largest rocket ever on its debut, scheduled for the early 2020s. As of November 2017, the company had grown to nearly 7,000, and was 8,000 in May 2020, where Gwynne Shotwell said she did not expect the company to grow much more to bring more to the market. The company has over 100 launches on its manifest representing about $12 billion in contract revenue. In late 2013, Musk said that increased competition would be a good thing for the US space industry.
At the same time, Musk also said that the US government regulates non-Americans technology as an ‘advanced weapon’ to make it difficult to hire non-American rocket builders. In 2016, he explained that the U.S. government would not allow non- Americans to work on rocket technology as it would be ‘a good thing’ for the country to have a ‘good thing’ to do in the future. He also said this would increase competition in the commercial launch industry in the United States, which he said would be good for the economy and the environment. In November 2013, he announced that SpaceX would be the first private company to launch an object into orbit around the Sun. He announced this in an attempt to regain public interest in space exploration and increase the budget of NASA. In 2001, Musk conceptualized Mars Oasis, a project to land a miniature experimental greenhouse and grow plants on Mars. On the flight home, Musk realized that he could start a company that could build the affordable rockets he needed. Musk calculated that the raw materials for building a rocket were only three percent of the sales price of a rocket at the time. The company grew rapidly, from 160 employees in November 2005 to 1100 in 2010, 3,800 employees and contractors by October 2013, nearly 5,000 by late 2015, and about 6,000 in April 2017. SpaceX has announced it intends to eventually replace its existing Falcon 9 launch vehicles and Dragon space capsule fleet with Starship, even in the Earth-orbit satellite delivery market.
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This page is based on the article SpaceX published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
