Fri, Mar 11, 2011
New Lease Gives Company Space To Grow In McGregor
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and the City of
McGregor, TX, today signed a lease agreement allowing SpaceX to
expand the size of its rocket development facility.
SpaceX Texas Facility
Under the deal, SpaceX will lease 631
acres for its test facility. The new lease will more than double
the size of the current 256 acre site on the Western edge of the
City of McGregor, and will last roughly 10 years, from February
2011 to January 31, 2021. "Our Texas rocket development facility is
critical to our operations," said Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO and Chief
Technology Officer. "This lease will allow us to move forward
on the growth we have planned for Texas. SpaceX already has more
than $2.5 billion in launch contracts for us to carry out over the
next few years - McGregor is going to be a very busy place."
The McGregor city council voted unanimously to support the proposal
on Friday, February 25, 2011. The final contract was signed
Wednesday.
SpaceX designs, manufactures, tests, and launches reliable, safe
and affordable rockets that carry satellites and spacecraft to
orbit, and spacecraft to transport cargo and eventually astronauts
to and from the International Space Station. Every Merlin engine
that powers the company's Falcon 9 rocket and every Draco thruster
that controls its Dragon spacecraft is first tested on the ground
in Texas before launch.
Since starting operations in Texas in
2003, SpaceX has invested $50 million in McGregor and expects to
have at least 140 employees by year's end. Texas operations in
McGregor will continue to expand to support dozens of upcoming
launches already under contract, with more on the way. In
addition, SpaceX is in negotiations with NASA to develop and test a
launch abort system for the Dragon spacecraft. That development
will begin in McGregor.
On December 8, 2010, SpaceX became the first commercial company to
successfully return a spacecraft from orbit, a feat achieved by
only a few nations in the history of space travel. The
December flight was SpaceX's first demonstration flight under
NASA's COTS program to develop commercial supply services to the
International Space Station. SpaceX will fly at least 12 missions
as part of a $1.6 billion contract for NASA to carry cargo to and
from the Space Station after the Space Shuttle program ends later
this year. Both the Dragon spacecraft and SpaceX's Falcon 9
rocket were designed from the beginning to carry astronauts and are
well positioned to fly the first-ever commercial, manned space
missions.
The growth in McGregor is reflective of growth company wide.
SpaceX now employs over 1,250 employees since being founded in 2002
and the company has been profitable since 2007. In addition
to the McGregor site SpaceX has headquarters in Hawthorne, CA;
launch facilities at the Air Force Station at Cape Canaveral and
the Reagan Test Site (RTS) at U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA);
and offices in Chantilly, VA, Huntsville, AL and Washington,
DC.
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