When billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, no one could anticipate just how fast and high Musk would take the company.
This December, SpaceX realized one of Musk's dreams for a fleet of reusable rockets by shooting a Falcon 9 rocket up into space and then landing its first stage back on Earth, completely intact.
This incredible feat is just the latest in a series of milestones for SpaceX, which is paving the road toward a new era of spaceflight unlike anything we've ever seen.
Here are nine ways that Musk and his company have already upended the spaceflight industry as we know it:
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Today, SpaceX is the fastest-growing launch services provider in the world.
In 2002, Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the intent to revolutionize the spaceflight industry. The company had a slow start: At the end of 2002 it had 14 employees, which had grown to just 160 by November, 2005. Today, it employs over 4,000 and is the fastest-growing launch services provider in the world.
SpaceX is one of the few companies that builds and launches its own rockets.
SpaceX is one of the few spaceflight companies that doubles as an aerospace manufacturer and launch services provider. That means it designs and manufacturers most of its rocket parts in-house, including its "all-American" Merlin 1D rocket engines (shown here), which power its Falcon 9 rocket fleet.
SpaceX has the most affordable rockets on the market.
Because they manufacture most of their own equipment, SpaceX has rapidly risen to become one of the most formidable competitors in the spaceflight market. In 2014, the company's CEO and founder, Elon Musk, said they could lift US Air Force satellites into orbit for $90 million per launch compared to SpaceX's competitor, the United Launch Alliance, who was charging $460 million per launch.
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