Founding

In early 2001, Elon Musk donated $100,000 to the Mars Society and joined its board of directors for a short time.[10]: 30–31  He was offered a plenary talk at their convention where he announced Mars Oasis, a project to land a miniature experimental greenhouse and grow plants on Mars, to revive public interest in space exploration.[11] Musk initially attempted to acquire a Dnepr ICBM for the project through Russian contacts from Jim Cantrell.[12] However two months later, the United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty and created the Missile Defense Agency, increasing tensions with Russia and generating new strategic interest for rapid and re-usable launch capability similar to the DC-X.[13]

When Musk returned to Moscow, Russia with Michael Griffin (who led the CIA's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel[14]), they found the Russians increasingly unreceptive.[15][16] On the flight home Musk announced that he could start a company to build the affordable rockets they needed instead.[16] By applying vertical integration,[15] using cheap commercial off-the-shelf components when possible,[16] and adopting the modular approach of modern software engineering, Musk believed SpaceX could significantly cut launch price.[16] Griffin would later be appointed NASA administrator[17] and award SpaceX a $396 million contract in 2006 before SpaceX had flown a rocket.[18]

In early 2002, Musk started to look for staff for his new space company, soon to be named SpaceX. Musk approached rocket engineer Tom Mueller (later SpaceX's CTO of propulsion) and invited him to become his business partner. Mueller agreed to work for Musk, and thus SpaceX was born.[19] SpaceX was first headquartered in a warehouse in El Segundo, California. Early SpaceX employees such as Tom Mueller (CTO), Gwynne Shotwell (COO) and Chris Thompson (VP of Operations) came from neighboring TRW and Boeing corporations following the cancellation of the Brilliant Pebbles program.[20] By November 2005, the company had 160 employees.[21] Musk personally interviewed and approved all of SpaceX's early employees.[22] Musk has stated that one of his goals with SpaceX is to decrease the cost and improve the reliability of access to space, ultimately by a factor of ten.[23]