In 2001, Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society. He was inspired by plans to place a growth-chamber for plants on Mars and discussed funding the project himself. In October 2001, Musk traveled to Moscow to buy refurbished Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the greenhouse payloads into space. He met with companies NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras; however, Musk was seen as a novice and was even spat on by one of the Russian chief designers. The group returned to the United States empty-handed. In February 2002, the group returned to Russia to look for three ICBMs. They had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket for $8 million, which Musk rejected. Musk instead decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets.With $100 million of his early fortune, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp., traded as SpaceX, in May 2002. As of 2021, he remains the company’s CEO and also holds the title of Chief Engineer
After three failed launches, SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 in 2008. It was the first private liquid-fuel rocket to reach Earth orbit.Later that year, SpaceX received a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services program contract for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement.[68] In 2012, the Dragon vehicle berthed with the ISS, a first for a private enterprise. Working towards its goal of reusable rockets, in 2015, SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9. Landings were later achieved on an autonomous spaceport drone ship, an ocean-based recovery platform. In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy; the inaugural mission carried Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload. In 2017, SpaceX unveiled its next-generation launch vehicle and spacecraft system, Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), later renamed to “Starship”, which would support all SpaceX launch service provider capabilities. In 2018, SpaceX announced a planned 2023 lunar circumnavigation mission, a private flight called dearMoon project. In 2020, SpaceX launched its first manned flight, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place a person into orbit and dock a crewed space-craft with the ISS
SpaceX began development of the Starlink constellation of low Earth orbit satellites in 2015 to provide satellite Internet access, with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018. A second set of test satellites and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation occurred in May 2019, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched. The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation is estimated by SpaceX to be about $10 billion.
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