Company
ActiveSpaceX
Hawthorne, California · Since 2002
Still private. Reusable orbital launch is its existing business. Settlement of another planet is not.
A later timeline chapter projects a role for this organization. That chapter is a projection. This page is about the institution as it exists, or as it existed.
Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies in 2002 to lower the cost of reaching orbit, with the stated longer aim of making life multiplanetary. The part that is already an industry is the first half. Falcon 9 flies, lands, and flies again. Customers pay for the ride.
The workforce that makes this true is mostly on the ground, in Hawthorne, at the Cape, and in Texas. Welders, propulsion engineers, and the technicians who turn a booster around between flights are the occupation. A settlement on Mars is not on the payroll.
Reuse as a shift
An expendable rocket employs a factory once per flight. A reusable one employs a factory and a launch crew that must make the same vehicle ready again. That is a maintenance culture closer to an airline than to a munitions plant, and it is the job the 2045 chapter is pointing at when it talks about turning vehicles around. SpaceX also builds satellites and a capsule. It is a private company, large, and unusual in how much it integrates under one roof.
Do not staff the brochure
The 2045 and 2070 chapters are projections. They start from SpaceX because any forecast that ignores the company that actually reflies boosters is pretending. They are not a claim that the company will own a city on another planet, or that it will still be independent. This page is about the launch business that exists.
The work it organized
- Propulsion engineer
- Launch technician
- Welder
- Flight-software engineer
On the timeline
Related
- NASAActive
- Rocket LabActive