Space X

In April 2011 as part of its second round of the CCDev (Commercial Crew Development) program, NASA
awarded a $75 million contract to SpaceX to develop the Dragon Integrated Launch System to prepare a
human evaluation of the Dragon Crew Transport Vehicle to the ISS. The contract included numerous
technical certification milestones: unmanned flight tests, manned flight tests and six operational
missions, followed by system certification. The 30-mission manifesto for 2018 represents a contract
worth nearly $1.2 billion for SpaceX.

In 2006, NASA announced that SpaceX had won the Phase 1 contract of NASA Commercial Orbital
Transportation Services (COTS) to demonstrate cargo delivery to the International Space Station (ISS)
with a possible contract option for crew transportation.

On Thursday, a new SpaceX drone ship called Shortfall Gravitas was towed to Port Canaveral to
complete the redeployment of SpaceX's rocket landing platforms to support upcoming launches from
Florida and California. Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceXs, announced that the company will build a
third drone ship in 2018.

SpaceX has teamed up with Port Canaveral to complete a new SpaceX drone ship called "A Shortfall of
Gravitas" for the offshore landing of Falcon rocket boosters. The drone ships are now in their fleet as the
company establishes a regular flight frequency from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California
following a slowdown in Falcon launch activities at the launch site on the West Coast. The drones will
allow SpaceX to recover and reuse Falcon boosters, lowering costs and boosting the company's launch
rate.

SpaceX has launched one Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg each of the past two years. After the
mission, the Falcon 9 booster returns to the landing site at Vandenberg. In March 2006, SpaceX
conducted its first Falcon 1 launch, which began and ended with a fuel leak and fire.

During that time, SpaceX earned millions of dollars in launch contracts, many of them from the US
government. The company entered the arena aboard Falcon 1 rocket, a two-stage liquid - fuel spacecraft
designed to transport small satellites into orbit. The Falcon 1 was cheaper to build and to operate than
its competitors, and the field was populated by spacecraft built and owned by government-funded
companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
This week the company added three rocket engines to Booster 3 and told residents in the area that it
would conduct a static fire test of the booster on Thursday, July 15. SpaceX’s Merlin engines, which are
cheaper than alternative options used by other companies, have enabled profitability as part of the
Falcon 1 rocket, a two-stage, liquid-fueled aircraft designed to send small satellites to orbit. SpaceX is
now focused on making reusable rockets, unlike other launchers that are made for one-time use.

The rocket will be built at the company's assembly hall a few miles from the launch site in South Texas.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Booster 3 would launch with Booster 4 if Booster 3 does not start and
passes its ground test. SpaceX is testing Booster 3 with three Raptor engines, an orbital version of the
super-heavy 3.3 "methane-powered Raptor.

SpaceX's SmallSat Rideshare program offers designated Falcon 9 missions for small satellite companies.
These missions are transporters [2] that enable numerous satellites to be sent to the Sun in synchronous
orbit.

In 2015, the first stage returned to Earth from its launch site. The first stage of Falcon 9 was to land in
the land-land zone 1 at Cape Canaveral.

The week-long expedition, called Dearmoon, is described as the world's first civilian lunar mission and is
scheduled for 2023. Tickets can be purchased for the launch attempt on June 29 or are considered fully
used when boarding a bus at the Apollo-Saturn V Center. A month later, Gravitas will move to the Pacific
coast for a month-long voyage that begins on June 10.

The Federal Aviation Administration began an environmental review of facilities in Boca Chica, Texas last
year after Elon Musk SpaceX said it would apply for a license to launch a next-generation rocket
prototype from the facility. The LabPadres have set up a free 24 / 7 live stream of the SpaceX spacecraft
under construction at the test site, complete with multi-camera views.

Elon Musk Founder Unveiled on Friday, July 9 a new floating rocket landing pad on Twitter with a
dramatic video of a high-flying drone circling above it. The pad is on its way to Florida to catch Falcon 9
rocket boosters at sea. It will need an automatic tug to take it from the nearby SpaceX launch site at
Florida's Kennedy Space Center into the Atlantic Ocean, he added in a tweet.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) is an American aerospace manufacturer and service
provider based in Hawthorne, California. Liftoff is read like the golden age of science fiction, but it is not
a novel by Robert Heinlein or Arthur C. Clarke.
He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2008 for his coverage of Hurricane Ike for the Houston Chronicle. Liftoff
is the true and amazing story of a man and a woman who have turned a science fiction dream into
reality. Eric Berger traces the exploits of SpaceX and its founder Elon Musk from the very beginning.