SpaceX, Falcon9

 Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond. Falcon 9 is the world’s first orbital class reusable rocket. Reusability allows SpaceX to refly the most expensive parts of the rocket, which in turn drives down the cost of space access.

Falcon Heavy is composed of three reusable Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft. As one of the world’s most powerful operational rockets, Falcon Heavy can lift nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lbs) to orbit.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., doing business as SpaceX, is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launch service provider and satellite communications company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and to colonize Mars. The company manufactures the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Starship heavy-lift launch vehicles, the Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon spacecraft, the Starlink mega-constellation satellite and rocket engines.

The company offers commercial satellite-based internet service via its constellation of Starlink satellites, which became the largest-ever satellite constellation in January 2020 and as of June 2023 comprised more than 4,300 small satellites in orbit.

SpaceX developed its first orbital launch vehicle, the Falcon 1, with internal funding. The Falcon 1 was an expendable two-stage-to-orbit small-lift launch vehicle. The total development cost of Falcon 1 was approximately $90 million to $100 million. The Falcon name was adopted from the DARPA Falcon Project, part of the Prompt Global Strike program of the US military.

In 2005, SpaceX announced plans to pursue a human-rated commercial space program through the end of the decade, a program that would later become the Dragon spacecraft. In 2006, the company was selected by NASA and awarded $396 million to provide crew and cargo resupply demonstration contracts to the ISS under the COTS program.