Spacex

 Space Exploration Technologies Corporation(Spacex) is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation service company whose headquarter is located in Hawthorne, California. Spacex was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. 

Spacex manufactures the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch Vehicles, several rocket engines, Dragon cargo and crew spacecraft and Starlink communication satellites 🛰️.

Company Information ℹ️

Type: Private.

Industry: Aerospace.

Founded: 6 May 2002.

Founder: Elon Musk.

Headquarter: Hawthorne, California, United States.

                          

Key People: Elon Musk( CEO&CTO), Gwynne Shotwell( COO&President ).

Products: Several Launch Vehicles, Several rocket engines, Dragon capsules, Starship, Starlink, ASDS landing platforms.

Services: Orbital rocket launch, satellite internet.

Revenue(2019): US$ 2 BILLION.

Owner: Elon Musk Trust ( 54% equity; 78%                                                    voting control).

Number of Employees: 9500(Feb 2021)

Website: www.spacex.com

Spacex's achievements include the first privately funded liquid-propellant rocket to reach orbit ( Falcon 1 in 2008); the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft ( Dragon in 2010) , the first private company to send a spacecraft to the international space station (spacex crew Dragon-Demo 2 in 2020). Spacex has flown and reflown the Falcon 9 series of rockets over 💯 times. 

Spacex is developing a satellite megaconstellation named starlink to provide commercial internet service. In January 2020 the starlink constellation became the largest satellite constellation in the world. Spacex is also developing star shape, a private funded, fully reusable, super heavy lift launch system for interplanetary spaceflight. Starship is intended to become the primary spacex orbital vehicle once operational, supplanting the existing Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Dragon fleet. Starship will be fully reusable and we'll have the highest payload capacity of any orbital rocket ever on its debut. 

Launch market competition and pricing:

Spacex's low launch prices, especially for communication satellites flying to to geostationary transfer orbit(GTO), have resulted in market pressure on its competitors to lower their own prices. Prior to 2013, the openly competed concept launch market had been dominated by Arianespace  (flying the Ariane 5) and International launch Services( flying the Proton). Whether published price of US dollar 56.5 million per launch to low Earth orbit, Falcon 9 rockets were the cheapest in the industry. European satellite operators are publishing the European space agency (ESA) to reduce the launch prices of the Ariane 5 and the future Ariane 6 rockets as a result of competition from spacex. In 2014 no commercial launches workbook to fly on the Russian proton rocket. 

Spacex also put an end to 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 launchers, 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 in order to decrease launch cost by halfs.

Congressional testimony of spacex in 2017 suggested that NASA space act agreement process of “ setting only high level requirement for cargo transport to space station [WHILE] living the details to industry" head 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 both the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rocket was estimated at approximately US$ 390 million. In 2011 NASA estimated that it would have caused the agency about US$4 Billion to develop a rocket like Falcon 9 booster based upon NASA'S traditional contracting processes, about 10 times more.

Spacex latest launched Falcon 9 booster

In May 2020 NASA's administrator Jim Bridenstine remarked that thanks to NASA's investments into space the United States has 70% of the commercial launch market, a major improvement since 2012 when there were no commercial launches from the country. 

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