Hawthorne-based rocket builder carried out the dreams of its mercurial CEO, Elon Musk, but its Southern California chapter now seems in jeopardy.
Elon Musk said the headquarters for X and SpaceX will both relocate to Texas, with the billionaire citing frustration over laws in California, where SpaceX is currently based in Hawthorne on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. (Photo by Brittany M. Solo Press-Telegram/SCNG)
This image from video provided by SpaceX shows the upper stage engine of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which blasted off from California on Thursday, July 11, 2024. The rocket, carrying 20 Starlink satellites, malfunctioned during the blast, leaving the company’s internet satellites in a precariously low orbit. (SpaceX via AP)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) Tuesday Vandenberg Space Force Base CA/USA, May 28, 2024. The satellite will go to a sun-synchronous polar orbit.
(Photo by Gene BlevinsContributing Photographer)
SpaceX Falcom 9 launches a ride share mission with South Korean spy satellite, first Irish satellite from Vandenberg Space Force Base CA/USA. Friday Dec 1, 2023. (Photo by Gene Blevins/Contributing Photographer)
Starship still attach to booster 7 spins out of control in the sky after launch from the pad during SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket, falls to earth after exploding 4 minutes after its launch Thursday from the company’s Boca Chica launchpad on a brief uncrewed test flight near Brownsville, Texas, U.S. April 20, 2023. Photo by Gene Blevins/Contributing Photographer
Final preparations are made for the launch of NASA’s DART mission on Tuesday. The DART launch will be on a SpaceX Falcon-9 at 10:20pm PST. from Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA. Nov 23,2021.
(Photo by Gene Blevins/Contributing Photographer)
This video image provided by SpaceX, a SpaceX Falcon 9 mission to launch 53 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E), takes off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., on Friday, May 13, 2022. (SpaceX via AP)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage booster returns back LZ-4 landing site Wednesday, Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA/USA. Feb 2,2022. The SpaceX launch with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency launch at 12:27pm PST. with a successful mission. (Photo by Gene Blevins/Contributing Photographer)
SpaceX crews continue work around SN15 starship prototype as it sits on a transporter at the landing sight after Wednesday’s successful launch and first landing from the company’s starship facility in Boca Chica, Texas, U.S. May 6, 2021. Photo by Gene Blevins/Contributing Photographer.
NASA astronaut Victor Glover is helped out of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft onboard the SpaceX GO Navigator recovery ship. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)
This photo provided by NASA shows from left, Expedition 64 Flight Engineers and SpaceX Crew-1 members Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, Michael Hopkins and Soichi Noguchi. SpaceX is targeting the predawn hours of Sunday, May 2, to bring back three NASA astronauts and one from Japan, after dangerously high wind scuttled a pair of earlier attempts. (NASA via AP)
From left, NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, aMichael Hopkins, and and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi speak to the media during a press conference from the International Space Station on Monday, April 26. Photo: Screenshot of NASA livecast
In this image made from NASA TV, the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft is seen from the international space station, Saturday, April 24, 2021. The recycled SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts has arrived at the International Space Station, a day after launching from Florida. (NASA via AP)
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine toured SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2019 with Spacex founder Elon Musk. (Photo by Chuck Bennett, Contributing Photographer)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster rocket lands safely Sunday, Oct. 7, 2018, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California during a mission to deploy SAOCOM 1A, a radar observation satellite for Argentina. It was the booster’s first-ever landing at Vandenberg. (Photo by Gene Blevins/Special to the Los Angeles Daily News)
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks to his workforce as he announces the worldÕs first private passenger scheduled to fly around the Moon aboard SpaceXÕs BFR launch vehicle from the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, U.S. September 17, Photo by Gene Blevins/LA DailyNews/SCNG
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk looks the winning team WARR Hyperloop, as the last of 4 teams of students comprised of over 600 competitors from more than 40 countries around the world compete in Hawthorne, California, to showcase their pods at SpaceXÍs third Hyperloop Pod Competition Sunday. The winning team was WARR Hyperloop, as they hit speeds of 284 mph today.
(Photo by Gene Blevins for the Los Angeles DailyNews/SCNG)
Team WARR Hyperloop check over their sled before moving it to the starting line at the 2018 Hyperloop pod competition at SpaceX in Hawthorne on Sunday, Jul 22, 2018. (Photo by Scott Varley, Daily Breeze/SCNG)
Team members of EPF Loop push their sled into the tube before their run in the 2018 Hyperloop pod competition at SpaceX in Hawthorne on Sunday, July 22, 2018. (Photo by Scott Varley, Daily Breeze/SCNG)
The Hyped team from the University of Edinburgh pose by their hyperloop sled during the 2018 Hyperloop pod competition at SpaceX in Hawthorne on Sunday, July 22, 2018. (Photo by Scott Varley, Daily Breeze/SCNG)
Canadian team Paradigm makes final adjustments to their pod, which travels in air bearings, before fitting it into the vacuum tube on the left. The second SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition was held Sunday, August 27, 2017, Hawthorne, CA. The competition features student teams who design a vehicle to travel through a vacuum tube along Jack Northrop Drive; the fastest vehicle wins.
(Photo by Steve McCrank, Daily Breeze/SCNG)
The SpaceX fairing catcher boat Mr Steven is doing it’s first day of sea trials off Pt Fermin in San Pedro after being fitted with new arms. The new arms support a much larger net to recover the fairings from SpaceX launches. Photo By Charles Bennett
Shaun Roe tests a flamethrower during the Boring Company’s Not-a-Flamethrower Party at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, U.S., on Saturday, June 9, 2018. The event is for people who reserved $1,000 flamethrowers from Elon Musk’s Boring Company Photographer: Dania Maxwell/Bloomberg
This image from video provided by SpaceX shows the company’s spacesuit in Elon Musk’s red Tesla sports car which was launched into space during the first test flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018. (Photo: SpaceX)
Military veterans who work at SpaceX gathered for group photos this week, wearing T-shirts they designed for the Veteran’s Day holiday. Credit SpaceX
Sections of a tunnel boring machine are being worked on in a parking lot along Crenshaw Blvd across the street from SpaceX in Hawthorne on Thursday, April 27, 2017. (Photo by Scott Varley, Daily Breeze/SCNG)
Sections of a tunnel boring machine are being worked on in a parking lot along Crenshaw Blvd across the street from SpaceX in Hawthorne on Thursday, April 27, 2017. (Photo by Scott Varley, Daily Breeze/SCNG)
Sections of a tunnel boring machine are being worked on in a parking lot along Crenshaw Blvd across the street from SpaceX in Hawthorne on Thursday, April 27, 2017. (Photo by Scott Varley, Daily Breeze/SCNG)
A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket launches from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. in August. The mission was a cargo and supply delivery to the International Space Station. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
But the Hawthorne-based rocketbuilder — founded in 2002 with a mission of slashing space-transportation costs, reusing key components and, some day, forging a sustainable colony on the red planet — essentially launched a new space race. For dollars.
Myriad companies benefited from SpaceX’s high-profile campaigns, with countless key moments aired live on the internet along the way, which buoyed the business of commercial spaceflight.
The company, valued at more than $210 billion according to Bloomberg reports, has led a fevered rush to cash in on the business of space transportation and helped spark an aerospace revival in the South Bay, aka “Space Beach.”
Founded in 2002 in El Segundo, the company builds and operates the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Dragon rockets. And it is working on Starship, envisioned as a mashup between a contemporary rocket and a Star Trek-style spaceship.
The company’s pioneering spacecraft, the Falcon series, was named for Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon — “the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy!” — from George Lucas’ Star Wars franchise.
Founded by Elon Musk, the company made headlines anew on Tuesday as the mercurial billionaire continued his flirtation with the political right by declaring he was bolting from California. He vowed to move SpaceX and his X social-media company to Texas — all in response to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signing of AB 1955, which bars school districts from informing parents if their children decide to undergo gender change.
“This is the final straw,” Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Musk, the bombastic South African who makes web headlines practically daily, made his initial fortune through Internet start-ups such as PayPal.
He founded SpaceX in 2002 using $100 million of his own money. His goal was to develop low-cost rockets that would make flights to space and back more accessible — and more affordable.
From its startup, the company expanded quickly, thanks in part to a $440 million NASA contract to design and develop the immediate future of U.S. human spaceflight. The contract included missions to the International Space Station, a breakthrough for a private business.
The company has had a mammoth impact on the Southern California business scene, as well as on its pop culture. Along the way, Musk dabbled in drilling tunnels that promised to ease L.A. traffic with his Boring Company, engaged in a high-profile romance with performance artist Grimes, sparked controversy by buying Twitter, aimed to build a functional “hyperloop,” hosted “Saturday Night Live,” veered in and out of the news with outrageous social-media posts, launched a sports car into space and even briefly marketed personal flamethrowers. And his long-range business plan still includes missions to Mars.
“If SpaceX moves a large amount of its operations, it’s a loss (for local industry), because SpaceX is a significant part of it,” said Mike Gruntman, a professor of astronautics at USC. “It especially hurts young people who dream of working in the space industry and their ability to get these high-paying jobs.”
SpaceX moved to Hawthorne in 2008 from seven buildings scattered around El Segundo and Los Angeles. Its goal: Build a site large enough to house all of its headquarters operations, a much more efficient setup, SpaceX spokesman Roger Gilbertson said at the time.
“We try to do as much in here in-house as possible,” Gilbertson said. “Engineering, shaping metal, parts testing and assembly are done here. It’s very tight control of everything.”
SpaceX renewed its deal with the city in 2017.
Early on at the Hawthorne site, Musk had no office — just his corner cubicle. His secretary had an adjacent cubicle. On his desk, featuring a row of books on space and rockets, sat a small toy robot next to a model rocket. On the wall was a poster of boxing legend Muhammad Ali standing over a knocked-out Sonny Liston.
In its early days, SpaceX was fraught with public bumbles. But Musk insisted that businesses must fail — and tap the lessons learned from such failures — to succeed. Musk even began to predict such failures, assuring that they would assure later successes. He still does that, shrugging off recent fiery explosions of Starship prototypes.
Amid the stumbles, the company snagged contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars and became a household word beyond the legions of “space nerds” who followed the company’s every move.
Since then, the company has racked up many “firsts” among private companies:
First to put a rocket powered by liquid fuel in orbit.
First to build, launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.
First to repurpose and relaunch a rocket booster.
First to send astronauts to the International Space Station.
As faux pas turned to triumphs, and SpaceX’s clientele boomed concurrently, the spotlight shone on Hawthorne — and city officials took heed.
In 2017, SpaceX agreed to stay in its 1-million-square-foot headquarters building adjacent to Hawthorne Municipal Airport through 2022 as long as the city reduced certain taxes on the business as promised.
The deal included a $260,000 cap on annual business license fees, which are calculated based on gross receipts – meaning that the more revenue SpaceX made, the more fees it would have to pay. This agreement allowed SpaceX to maintain a flat tax rate as it got larger, city officials said.
City officials, aware that officials in Florida and Texas were trying to woo the rocket company, worked hard to keep SpaceX in town.
“When they mention SpaceX in the future, they’re also going to mention Hawthorne,” Mayor Danny Juarez said in 2017. “We’re very, very proud of that.”
In addition to reduced fees, the company’s economic development agreement with Hawthorne included a “corporate citizenship” clause that allowed the city to use the SpaceX logo for its own branding, and encouraged the company to engage with schools and community events.
Beyond its operations in Hawthorne, SpaceX announced in 2017 that it wanted to double its footprint in the Port of Long Beach, and, in 2021, it subleased a marine terminal from the port to house its West Coast rocket recovery operations.
In 2017, Hawthorne Councilmember Olivia Valentine called the company an inspiration.
“They are going to bring to us not only a wonderful company, but they’ve made a real commitment to maintain their place of business in the city, and to provide an inspiration to our schoolchildren,” Valentine said. “I think the city is going to benefit greatly from having them here, and I look forward to a long association with them.”
Staff writer Delilah Brumer contributed to this report.
