Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, in 2002 with the stated goal of making spaceflight less expensive and eventually enabling human settlement beyond Earth. The company began with Falcon 1, a small orbital rocket developed largely in-house. The first three launches failed. In September 2008, the fourth Falcon 1 flight reached orbit, a milestone that kept the young company alive and demonstrated that a private startup could build and launch an orbital rocket.
NASA awarded SpaceX a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services development agreement in 2006 and later selected it for cargo delivery to the International Space Station. Dragon reached the station in 2012. This work gave the company a customer and a demanding operational task while it continued developing larger launch vehicles. Falcon 9’s first stage was designed to return, but landing a rocket booster after launch required years of tests and failures.
In December 2015, SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 first stage on solid ground after an orbital mission. In 2017 it flew a previously used booster again. Reuse does not make a launch free: stages must be inspected, refurbished, and integrated, and not every component returns. But repeated flights can spread manufacturing costs across more missions and increase operational learning.
SpaceX’s approach couples design, manufacturing, launch operations, and iterative testing inside one company. That vertical integration can speed decisions, though it demands large capital and carries technical risk. The important change is measurable: orbital rockets shifted from almost always being discarded to a system in which booster recovery and reflights are routine for the company. That altered expectations across the launch industry.