SpaceX

In early 2001, Elon Musk met Robert Zubrin and donated $100,000 to his Mars Society and briefly joined its board of directors. In August 2001, 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 provided by Jim Cantrell; however, he was unsuccessful.

Musk returned with his team to Moscow, this time bringing Michael D. Griffin, who later became the 11th Administrator of NASA, but found the Russians increasingly unreceptive. On the flight home, Musk stated that he could start a company to build the affordable rockets the project required. 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, 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), were previously employed at TRW and Boeing. Musk personally interviewed and approved all of SpaceX's early employees.

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. The Falcon rocket series was named after Star Wars's Millennium Falcon fictional spacecraft.

In 2004, SpaceX protested against NASA to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) because of a sole-source contract awarded to Kistler Aerospace. Before the GAO could respond, NASA withdrew the contract, and formed the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. …

SpaceX has developed three launch vehicles. The small-lift Falcon 1 was the first launch vehicle developed and was retired in 2009. The medium-lift Falcon 9 and the heavy-lift Falcon Heavy are both operational.

Falcon 1 was a small rocket capable of placing several hundred kilograms into low Earth orbit. It launched five times between 2006 and 2009, of which two were successful. The Falcon 1 was the first privately funded, liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit.

Falcon 9 is a medium-lift launch vehicle capable of delivering up to 22,800 kilograms (50,265 lb) to orbit, competing with the Delta IV and the Atlas V rockets, as well as other launch providers around the world. It has nine Merlin engines in its first stage. The Falcon 9 v1.0 rocket successfully reached orbit on its first attempt on June 4, 2010. Its third flight, COTS Demo Flight 2, launched on May 22, 2012, and launched the first commercial spacecraft to reach and dock with the International Space Station (ISS). The vehicle was upgraded to Falcon 9 v1.1 in 2013, Falcon 9 Full Thrust in 2015, and finally to Falcon 9 Block 5 in 2018. The first stage of Falcon 9 is designed to retro propulsively land, be recovered, and flown again.

Falcon Heavy is a heavy-lift launch vehicle capable of delivering up to 63,800 kg (140,700 lb) to Low Earth orbit (LEO) or 26,700 kg (58,900 lb) to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO). It uses three slightly modified Falcon 9 first-stage cores with a total of 27 Merlin 1D engines. The Falcon Heavy successfully flew its inaugural mission on February 6, 2018, launching Musk's personal Tesla Roadster into heliocentric orbit.

Both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are certified to conduct launches for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL). As of October 2, 2026, the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have been launched 706 times, resulting in 703 full mission successes, one partial success, and one in-flight failure. In addition, a Falcon 9 experienced a pre-flight failure before a static fire test in 2016.

SpaceX is developing a fully reusable super-heavy lift launch system known as Starship. It comprises a reusable first stage, called Super Heavy, and the reusable Starship second stage space vehicle. …

SpaceX is headquartered at SpaceX Starbase near Brownsville, Texas, where it manufactures and launches its Starship launch vehicle. Much of the company's engineering, manufacturing, and mission operations remain based at its facility in Hawthorne, California, its headquarters until 2024, where it manufactures Falcon launch vehicles and Dragon spacecraft and operates mission control. The company also operates a rocket development and test facility in McGregor, Texas, and an office in the Washington, D.C., area that supports government customers. SpaceX operates launch facilities in California, Florida, and Texas.

SpaceX operates a facility in Hawthorne, California. The three-story building, originally constructed by Northrop Corporation to manufacture Boeing 747 fuselage sections, houses office space, mission control, and Falcon 9 manufacturing operations.

SpaceX manufactures its rocket engines, rocket stages, spacecraft, avionics, and flight software largely in-house. Much of this work is performed at the Hawthorne facility, reflecting the company's emphasis on vertical integration.

The Hawthorne facility served as SpaceX's headquarters until August 2024, when the company relocated its headquarters to Starbase, Texas.

SpaceX manufactures and launches Starship vehicles from SpaceX Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, near Brownsville, Texas. The company announced plans for the site in 2014, and began construction later that year. The first suborbital test flights occurred in 2019, followed by orbital launches beginning in 2023.

SpaceX's operations at Starbase have been the subject of environmental reviews and regulatory actions. In August 2024, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality cited the company for environmental violations related to discharges near the launch site. The Environmental Protection Agency later fined the company approximately $150,000 for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.

The SpaceX Rocket Development and Test Facility in McGregor, Texas, is used for rocket engine development and testing. Every SpaceX rocket engine and thruster undergoes acceptance testing at the facility before flight. …

SpaceX won demonstration and actual supply contracts from NASA for the International Space Station (ISS) with technology the company developed. SpaceX is also certified for U.S. military launches of Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle-class (EELV) payloads.

In 2006, SpaceX won a NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Phase 1 contract to demonstrate cargo delivery to the ISS, with a possible contract option for crew transport. Through this contract, designed by NASA to provide "seed money" through Space Act Agreements for developing new capabilities, NASA paid SpaceX $396 million to develop the cargo configuration of the Dragon spacecraft, while SpaceX developed the Falcon 9 launch vehicle with their resources. These Space Act Agreements have been shown to have saved NASA millions of dollars in development costs, making rocket development 4–10 times less expensive than if produced by NASA alone.

In December 2010, with the launch of the SpaceX COTS Demo Flight 1 mission, SpaceX became the first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft. Dragon successfully berthed with the ISS during SpaceX COTS Demo Flight 2 in May 2012, a first for a private spacecraft.

Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) is a series of contracts awarded by NASA from 2008 to 2016 for the delivery of cargo and supplies to the ISS on commercially operated spacecraft. The first CRS contracts were signed in 2008 and awarded $1.6 billion to SpaceX for 12 cargo transport missions, covering deliveries to 2016. SpaceX CRS-1, the first of the 12 planned resupply missions, launched in October 2012, achieved orbit, berthed, and remained on station for 20 days, before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

CRS missions have flown approximately twice a year to the ISS since then. In 2015, NASA extended the Phase 1 contracts by ordering an additional three resupply flights from SpaceX, and then extended the contract further for a total of twenty cargo missions to the ISS. The final Dragon 1 mission, SpaceX CRS-20, departed the ISS in April 2020, and Dragon was subsequently retired from service. A second phase of contracts was awarded in January 2016 with SpaceX as one of the awardees. SpaceX will fly up to nine additional CRS flights with the upgraded Dragon 2 spacecraft. …

SpaceX's low launch prices, especially for communications satellites flying to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), have resulted in market pressure on its competitors to lower their own prices. Prior to 2013, the openly competed comsat launch market had been dominated by Arianespace (flying the Ariane 5) and International Launch Services (flying the Proton). With a published price of $56.5 million per launch to low Earth orbit, Falcon 9 rockets were the least expensive in the industry. European satellite operators are pushing the ESA to reduce launch prices of the Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 rockets as a result of competition from SpaceX.

SpaceX ended the United Launch Alliance (ULA) monopoly of U.S. military payloads when it began to compete for national security launches. In 2015, anticipating a slump in domestic, military, and spy launches, ULA stated that it would go out of business unless it won commercial satellite launch orders. To that end, ULA announced a major restructuring of processes and workforce to decrease launch costs by half.

Congressional testimony by SpaceX in 2017 suggested that the NASA Space Act Agreement process of "setting only a high-level requirement for cargo transport to the space station [while] leaving the details to industry" had allowed SpaceX to design and develop the Falcon 9 rocket on its own at a substantially lower cost. According to NASA's own independently verified numbers, SpaceX's total development cost for the Falcon 9 rocket, including the Falcon 1 rocket, was estimated at $390 million. In 2011, NASA estimated that it would have cost the agency about $4 billion to develop a rocket like the Falcon 9 booster based upon NASA's traditional contracting processes, about ten times more. In May 2020, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine remarked that thanks to NASA's investments into SpaceX, the United States has 70% of the commercial launch market, a major improvement since 2012 when there were no commercial launches from the country.

As of 2024, SpaceX operates a Rideshare and Bandwagon (mid inclination) programs. This provides additional competition for small satellite launchers.