This is a corporate history of SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company founded by Elon Musk.
Musk's personal ventures and founding After being ousted as the CEO of PayPal in late 2000, Elon Musk started to gain an interest in space exploration ventures. This spark of interest, according to Musk, came when he was being asked by his friend entrepreneur Adeo Ressi about his plan for the future after PayPal. Musk looked up at NASA's website and was surprised that NASA did not have any concrete plan for a human mission to Mars. He then began to attend space conferences and provided funding for private space projects, which include The Planetary Society's solar sail and the Ansari X Prize crewed spaceflight competition. Musk also pledged US$100,000 to the Mars Society and was invited to be in its board of directors. As early as August 2001, in contemporary sources, Musk has publicly expressed his support for making humans an interplanetary species at the Mars Society's annual convention. The same month, Musk resigned from his position at Mars Society.
According to Robert Zubrin, Mars Society's founder, he provided Musk contact to aerospace engineer Jim Cantrell as a technical adviser for the society's Mars Gravity Biosatellite project. From there, Musk, Cantrell, along with a few other engineers worked on Mars Oasis, a project that aimed to grow a plant in Martian soil as a publicity stunt for garnering interest to Mars missions. Mars Oasis project is independent from the Mars Society. Musk and his team travelled twice to Russia, once in October 2001 and another in February 2002 with Michael D. Griffin, to obtain a refurbished intercontinental ballistic missile to launch Mars Oasis. Both attempts failed – the missiles were outrageously priced by the ISC Kosmotras at $8 million per missile when queried, and the team was concerned that the price would go up even higher after the deal had been finalized. Reportedly, this is because Musk and his team were not regarded highly by the Russians.
After the second failed attempt to procure a missile, the Mars Oasis plan was abandoned and Musk pondered the feasibility of building a rocket himself. As he learned more about the United States space industry, in retrospect, Musk realized that the Mars Oasis mission would more likely lead to an unsustainable Mars program, similar to how the Apollo program operated. According to Musk, the crucial component for a sustainable Mars program is a low launch cost.
In early 2002, with that realization, Musk met with aerospace engineers at a hotel in Los Angeles International Airport to discuss founding a space launch company, with reportedly some having scoffed at the idea. In April, from that group he invited five that could join the company as early employees: Michael Griffin, Jim Cantrell, John Garvey, Tom Mueller, and Chris Thompson. Griffin, Cantrell and Garvey declined the invitation, while Mueller and Thompson became the company's first and second employee respectively. Musk provided half of his $180 million from PayPal stocks to the newly founded company securing both employees with two-years' worth of salary. The company was named "Space Exploration Technologies Corporation", originally with "S.E.T." as a shortened name, but it was quickly changed to be "SpaceX". According to filings, SpaceX was incorporated on March 14, 2002, but according to various sources SpaceX's de facto founding date might instead be May 6 or around June.
Falcon 1
Musk assumed the role of Chief Engineer, after having offered the title to Griffin who did not join SpaceX. Mueller was in charge of developing rocket engines, propellant tanks and plumbing; Thompson was in charge of making the rocket's body and couplings. Hans Koenigsmann, who was recommended by Thompson and had met Musk a few months earlier, joined SpaceX and was in charge of making the rocket's avionics (electronic systems). In August 2002, Gwynne Shotwell was hired as the head of sales for the company.
At first, SpaceX's employees would meet at hotels in airports, but later the company headquartered at a building in 1310 East Grand Avenue, El Segundo, California. The building was , which at the time housed only a few cubicles and fewer than a dozen employees. The company at the time was under a flat hierarchy, so employees (including Musk) could freely switch roles and do other person's tasks if needed. Musk personally interviewed the first three thousand employees, most were college graduates (because they do not have family attachments), and pushed them to work long hours at their highest effort.
SpaceX's first rocket was named Falcon 1 by Musk, taking inspiration from the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars after their early contract for the DARPA Falcon Project. Falcon 1 was designed with a core tenet of low launch cost; according to contemporary sources the rocket has an advertised price of $6 million per launch. This is the reason SpaceX implemented tight vertical integration for manufacturing rocket parts. Unlike most aerospace companies at the time, the Falcon 1 was developed in an iterative and incremental process instead of the waterfall process. Musk was being extremely optimistic about the launch schedule; he wanted to launch Falcon 1 by the end of 2003, but late December 2005 would be when the rocket was first ready for flight. A mockup for the rocket was first officially unveiled to the public and the government at the National Mall, Washington, D.C. on December 8, 2003.
Merlin and Kestrel engine
The Falcon 1's first stage needed a rocket engine that produces about of thrust and used a kerosene–liquid oxygen propellant combination. However, because Mueller had little experience at building a turbopump for the engine, he initially outsourced the turbopump from NASA's Fastrac engine. The one- or two-year long procurement process was too long for SpaceX, so the company contracted the manufacturer directly (named Barber-Nichols) to build Fastrac's turbopump. Later, a Barber-Nichols employee suggested that the engine should be named for a type of falcon bird, because the rocket itself is named 'Falcon 1'. Mueller called the first stage engine "Merlin" after a medium-sized falcon and the second stage engine "Kestrel" after the small falcon.
SpaceX also needed a test site for the Merlin and Kestrel engines. In 2002, the company rented a space at the Mojave Air and Space Port to test the turbopumps, but soon SpaceX ran into issues with the testing facility: one time, black sooty clouds from the turbopump enveloped the air traffic control tower. A bigger and more lax testing facility was needed, especially because the Mojave Spaceport only allows testing of engines that have less than one-half the thrust of the Merlin engine. SpaceX finally chose a testing site at McGregor, Texas that was previously owned by the bankrupted Beal Aerospace. To save time, employees from the California headquarters would fly there on Musk's private jet. At 9:50 P.M., March 11, 2003, the Merlin engine completed its first ever full firing with a duration of about half a second, achieving a thrust of and 93% combustion efficiency.
Launch site preparations
Initially, SpaceX planned to launch the Falcon 1 at Vandenberg Air Force Base due to its close proximity to the company's headquarters. The Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 3 was licensed to the company in early 2004, and SpaceX employees began the construction of supporting facilities around the launch complex. By early 2005, the first Falcon 1 arrived to the launch site via a flatbed truck. In the first week of May 2005, SpaceX tried to perform its first static fire attempt, but after many aborts and recycling due to software bugs and bad instruments, its liquid oxygen supply ran out and the test was cancelled for the day. The second static fire attempt a few weeks later, was also cancelled for the same reason, but the third static fire attempt on May 27 was a success.
However, since early 2003, when the Malaysian government contacted SpaceX for launching RazakSAT into a near-equatorial orbit, SpaceX knew that Vandenberg was not an ideal launch site. To get to that orbit from California, the rocket needs to go east and into the continental United States, which is not allowed for safety. The then-current version of the Falcon 1 also needed to borrow velocity from the Earth's rotation to launch RazakSAT, meaning that a suitable launch site would be near the equator. So, after the deal was signed for $7 million, SpaceX selected Omelek Island, Kwajalein Atoll as the place for launching the satellite. Plans for launching Falcon 1 at Vandenburg were foiled when the Air Force kept delaying giving clearance for SpaceX's launch, citing the impending Titan IV launch of a reconnaissance satellite. SpaceX had to abandon $7 million worth of equipment at Vandenberg.
It was reasoned that waiting until the Titan IV launch or suing the Air Force would not be ideal for the company. In retrospect, Musk commented: "Technically, we weren't kicked out of Vandenberg, we were just put on ice. The Air Force never said no, but they never said yes. This went on for six months. The resources were draining out of the company. Effectively, it was just like being starved."
So, in June 2005, construction of the Omelek launch site begin. Aside from a small concrete bunker, everything else was brought in from the mainland or built from scratch: concrete launch pad, rocket hangar, electric generators, communications, etc. By September, most of the launch site was finished and more than of equipment were shipped by sea or air. The first stage of Falcon 1 came in September and the second stage came a month later; they were assembled and carried to the launch site using a wheeled strongback, rolling on top of pieces of plywood. One day before the first attempted Falcon 1 launch, due to frustration and intense pressure, the employees on Omelek went on strike; this was quickly resolved by a supply drop of chicken wings and cigarettes.
First, second and third failed launches
Originally, TacSat-1 was going to be the payload for the maiden Falcon 1 launch, but eventually the FalconSAT-2 satellite from the United States Air Force Academy was chosen instead. The static fire test before the launch on November 26, 2005 was postponed due to a helium and oxygen leak by a faulty valve, and the attempted launch on December 20 was also cancelled due to the bad weather. Thompson, who was supervising the launch, found that the Falcon 1 first stage had buckled and was mere seconds away from a violent implosion. This was again caused by a faulty valve that did not open during propellant detanking.
The following year, a new first stage was shipped to Omelek. After the rocket was assembled, on February 6, the second stage's avionics short circuited and almost lead to the launch's months-long delay, if not for the quickly obtained capacitor from the mainland. The maiden launch of Falcon 1 happened on March 24, 2006, at 22:30 UTC, at which a fire damaged the rocket's pressurization system and cause the Merlin engine to flame off at T+29 seconds. The next morning, SpaceX employees and civilians from the atoll cleaned up the rocket's debris and eventually found FalconSAT-2 lying inside a machine shop.
Overview On August 4, 2008, SpaceX accepted a further $20 million investment from Founders Fund. In early 2012, approximately two-thirds of the company was owned by its founder and his 70 million shares were then estimated to be worth $875 million on private markets, which roughly valued SpaceX at $1.3 billion as of February 2012. After the COTS 2+ flight in May 2012, the company private equity valuation nearly doubled to $2.4 billion.