SpaceX

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. otherwise known as SpaceX is a commercial space company founded and operated by Elon Musk. Musk has a vision of lowering the cost of creating single use expendable vehicles. This company has had the achievements of  being the first corporation to put a rocket into orbit and their most recent achievement of being the the first company to recover a capsule from orbit. Also they appear to be one of the few commercial space endeavors to achieve a profitable position at this time.

Now as for my opinion on the company has both positive and negative aspects of it. They are doing a lot of things quite well. Musk was smart enough to find some people with quite a bit of experience in liquid rocket engine development to design and build his Merlin rocket engine. The repetitiveness of the design was also a good call as to increase manufacturing speed. Also repeating his design of the main set of engines with his boosters for the proposed Falcon 9 Heavy will allow him to manufacture the same piece multiple times for relatively low cost. The business plan looks to be pretty solid with only relying on NASA for what appears to be about half of its contracts (too much reliance on NASA put the company at the mercy of politics). I do see Elon Musk's push for human space flight as a short lived victory. If SpaceX gets contracts from NASA to carry humans to space then they most likely will be the first company to put humans into orbit. The competition of current suborbital space flight companies will in about 10 to 15 years drive that cost well out of SpaceX's reach. One point I would like to say is that if SpaceX was wise after they develop their heavy lift vehicle they should try to build a fuel station in orbit to sell fuel in space for what would be a huge profit. Maybe even create a 2 vehicle ferry service for that fuel station to support other distant exploration projects. I think that would guarantee SpaceX's long term survival in the future of space.