SpaceX Hawthorne | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2019-03-27

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX


00:04:29 1 History
00:08:27 1.1 Goals
00:11:50 1.2 Achievements
00:14:45 1.3 Setbacks
00:18:11 1.4 Ownership, funding and valuation
00:22:17 2 Spacecraft and flight hardware
00:23:35 2.1 Rocket engines
00:27:01 2.2 Falcon launch vehicles
00:31:03 2.3 Dragon capsules
00:35:58 3 Research and development
00:36:59 3.1 Reusable launch system
00:40:27 3.2 Interplanetary Transport System / BFR
00:42:34 3.3 Other projects
00:45:51 4 Infrastructure
00:46:29 4.1 Headquarters, manufacturing and refurbishment facilities
00:49:29 4.2 Development and test facilities
00:52:07 4.3 Launch facilities
00:53:14 4.3.1 Cape Canaveral
00:54:01 4.3.2 Vandenberg
00:54:46 4.3.3 Kennedy Space Center
00:55:36 4.3.4 Brownsville
00:56:50 4.4 Satellite prototyping facility
00:58:03 5 Launch contracts
00:58:50 5.1 NASA contracts
00:59:00 5.1.1 COTS
01:01:10 5.1.2 Commercial cargo
01:03:03 5.1.3 Commercial crew
01:05:13 5.2 US Defense contracts
01:09:37 5.3 International contracts
01:09:47 5.3.1 Kazakhstan
01:10:30 6 Launch market competition and pricing pressure



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SUMMARY
=======
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., doing business as SpaceX, is a private American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars. SpaceX has since developed the Falcon launch vehicle family and the Dragon spacecraft family, which both currently deliver payloads into Earth orbit.
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 (Dragon in 2012), the first propulsive landing for an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2015), the first reuse of an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2017), and the first private company to launch an object into orbit around the sun (Falcon Heavy's payload of a Tesla Roadster in 2018). SpaceX has flown 16 resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) under a partnership with NASA. NASA also awarded SpaceX a further development contract in 2011 to develop and demonstrate a human-rated Dragon, which would be used to transport astronauts to the ISS and return them safely to Earth. SpaceX conducted the maiden launch of its Crew Dragon spacecraft on a NASA-required demonstration flight on March 2, 2019 and is set to launch its first crewed Crew Dragon later in 2019. On 11 March at 8:45 a.m. EST, the Spacex Crew Dragon completed its first uncrewed flight that splash-landed in the Atlantic. The flight named SpX-DM1 has demonstrated the Crew Dragon's ability to safely transport crew to ISS and back.. 
SpaceX announced in 2011 that it was beginning a reusable launch system technology development program. In December 2015, the first Falcon 9 was flown back to a landing pad near the launch site, where it successfully accomplished a propulsive vertical landing. This was the first such achievement by a rocket for orbital spaceflight. In April 2016, with the launch of CRS-8, SpaceX successfully vertically landed the first stage on an ocean drone ship landing platform. In May 2016, in another first, SpaceX again landed the first stage, but during a significantly more energetic geostationary transfer orbit mission. In March 2017, SpaceX became the first to successfully re-launch and land the first stage of an orbital rocket.In September 2016, CEO Elon Musk unveiled the mission architecture of the Interplanetary Transport System program, an ambitious privately funded initiative to develop spaceflight te ...