Facilities

SpaceX is headquartered in Hawthorne, California, which also serves as its primary manufacturing plant. The company operates a research & major operation in Redmond, Washington, owns a test site in Texas and operates three launch sites, with another under development. SpaceX also operates regional offices in Texas, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

Headquarters, manufacturing, and refurbishment facilitiesedit

SpaceX Headquarters is located in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, California. The large three-story facility, originally built by Northrop Corporation to build Boeing 747 fuselages, houses SpaceX's office space, mission control, and, as of 2018, all vehicle manufacturing. In March 2018, SpaceX indicated that it would manufacture its next-generation, 9 m (30 ft)-diameter launch vehicle, the Starship at a new facility on the Los Angeles waterfront in the San Pedro area. The company had leased an 18-acre (73,000 m2) site near Berth 240 in the Los Angeles, however in January 2019 the lease was canceled and the construction of Starship moved to a new site in South Texas.

The area has one of the largest concentrations of aerospace headquarters, facilities, and/or subsidiaries in the U.S., including Boeing/McDonnell Douglas main satellite building campuses, Aerospace Corp., Raytheon, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Air Force Space Command's Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and AECOM, etc., with a large pool of aerospace engineers and recent college engineering graduates.

SpaceX utilizes a high degree of vertical integration in the production of its rockets and rocket engines. SpaceX builds its rocket engines, rocket stages, spacecraft, principal avionics and all software in-house in their Hawthorne facility, which is unusual for the aerospace industry. Nevertheless, SpaceX still has over 3,000 suppliers with some 1,100 of those delivering to SpaceX nearly weekly.

In June 2017, SpaceX announced they would construct a facility on 0.88 hectares (2.17 acres) in Port Canaveral Florida for refurbishment and storage of previously-flown Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy booster cores.needs update

Development and test facilitiesedit

SpaceX operates its first Rocket Development and Test Facility in McGregor, Texas. All SpaceX rocket engines are tested on rocket test stands, and low-altitude VTVL flight testing of the Falcon 9 Grasshopper v1.0 and F9R Dev1 test vehicles in 2013–2014 were carried out at McGregor. 2019 low-altitude VTVL testing of the much larger 9-meter (30 ft)-diameter "Starhopper" is planned to occur at the SpaceX South Texas Launch Site near Brownsville, Texas, which is currently under construction. On January 23, 2019, strong winds at the Texas test launch site blew over the nose cone over the first test article rocket, causing delays that will take weeks to repair according to SpaceX representatives. In the event, SpaceX decided to forego building another nose cone for the first test article, because at the low velocities planned for that rocket, it was unnecessary.

The company purchased the McGregor facilities from Beal Aerospace, where it refitted the largest test stand for Falcon 9 engine testing. SpaceX has made a number of improvements to the facility since purchase and has also extended the acreage by purchasing several pieces of adjacent farmland. In 2011, the company announced plans to upgrade the facility for launch testing a VTVL rocket, and then constructed a half-acre concrete launch facility in 2012 to support the Grasshopper test flight program. As of October 2012update, the McGregor facility had seven test stands that are operated "18 hours a day, six days a week" and is building more test stands because production is ramping up and the company has a large manifest in the next several years. needs update

In addition to routine testing, Dragon capsules (following recovery after an orbital mission), are shipped to McGregor for de-fueling, cleanup, and refurbishment for reuse in future missions.

Launch facilitiesedit

SpaceX currently operates three orbital launch sites, at Cape Canaveral, Vandenberg Air Force Base, and Kennedy Space Center, and is under construction on a fourth in Brownsville, Texas. SpaceX has indicated that they see a niche for each of the four orbital facilities and that they have sufficient launch business to fill each pad. The Vandenberg launch site enables highly inclined orbits (66–145°), while Cape Canaveral enables orbits of medium inclination, up to 51.6°.self-published source? Before it was retired, all Falcon 1 launches took place at the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on Omelek Island.

Cape Canaveraledit

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) is used for Falcon 9 launches to low Earth and geostationary orbits. SLC-40 is not capable of supporting Falcon Heavy launches. As part of SpaceX's booster reusability program, the former Launch Complex 13 at Cape Canaveral, now renamed Landing Zone 1, has been designated for use for Falcon 9 first-stage booster landings.

Vandenbergedit

Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) is used for payloads to polar orbits. The Vandenberg site can launch both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, but cannot launch to low inclination orbits. The neighboring SLC-4W has been converted to Landing Zone 4, where SpaceX successfully landed one Falcon 9 first-stage booster, in October 2018.

Kennedy Space Centeredit

On April 14, 2014, SpaceX signed a 20-year lease for Launch Pad 39A. The pad was subsequently modified to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. SpaceX has launched 13 Falcon 9 missions from Launch Pad 39A, the latest of which was launched on November 15, 2020. SpaceX launched its first crewed mission to the ISS from Launch Pad 39A on May 30, 2020.

Brownsvilleedit

In August 2014, SpaceX announced they would be building a commercial-only launch facility at Brownsville, Texas. The Federal Aviation Administration released a draft Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Texas facility in April 2013, and "found that 'no impacts would occur' that would force the Federal Aviation Administration to deny SpaceX a permit for rocket operations," and issued the permit in July 2014. SpaceX started construction on the new launch facility in 2014 with production ramping up in the latter half of 2015, with the first suborbital launches from the facility in 2019. Real estate packages at the location have been named by SpaceX with names based on the theme "Mars Crossing".

Satellite prototyping facilityedit

In January 2015, SpaceX announced it would be entering the satellite production business and global satellite internet business. The first satellite facility is a 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) office building located in Redmond, Washington. As of January 2017, a second facility in Redmond was acquired with 40,625 square feet (3,774.2 m2) and has become a research and development lab for the satellites. In July 2016, SpaceX acquired an additional 8,000 square feet (740 m2) creative space in Irvine, California (Orange County) to focus on satellite communications.