
Musk tried to purchase cheap rockets from Russia but returned empty-handed after failing to find rockets for an affordable price.
He announced that the project would be "the farthest that life's ever traveled" in an attempt to regain public interest in space exploration and increase NASA's budget. In 2001, Elon Musk conceptualized Mars Oasis, a project to land a miniature experimental greenhouse and grow plants on Mars. See also: List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches 2001–2004: Founding 5 Launch market competition and pricing pressure.3.3.1 Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.3.1 Headquarters, manufacturing, and refurbishment facilities.1.7 2019–present: Starship, Starlink, and first crewed launches.
1.6 2017–2018: Leading global commercial launch provider. 1.4 2013–2015: Commercial launches and rapid growth. 1.2 2005–2009: Falcon 1 and first orbital launches. Starship is planned to be fully reusable and will have the highest payload capacity of any orbital rocket ever on its debut, scheduled for the early 2020s. Starship is intended to become the primary SpaceX orbital vehicle once operational, supplanting the existing Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Dragon fleet. SpaceX is also developing Starship, a privately funded, fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch system for interplanetary spaceflight. In January 2020 the Starlink constellation became the largest satellite constellation ever launched. SpaceX is developing a satellite megaconstellation named Starlink to provide commercial internet service. SpaceX has flown and reflown the Falcon 9 series of rockets over one hundred times. 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 vertical take-off and vertical 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 send astronauts to orbit and to the International Space Station ( SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 in 2020). SpaceX manufactures the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, several rocket engines, Dragon cargo, crew spacecraft and Starlink communications satellites. SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. ( SpaceX) is an American aerospace manufacturer, space transportation services and communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California.