Image via spacex.com
Although they’ve mainly been based in Hawthorne, California, SpaceX is moving into Orange County, setting up an office in Irvine. They aren’t moving; they’re expanding. The new office space is just one of several expansions the company has in the works, including a one mile track to test a hyperloop high-speed transportation system. They signed a five-year lease in a newly renovated building, making this their third operation site in California, following the Hawthorne home office and launch facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
How many people will be working in Irvine or exactly what they’ll be doing remains to be seen, but there are currently engineering positions listed on their website. SpaceX seems to be increasingly expanding operations, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise considering they’ve been doing pretty well for themselves lately. Despite a few difficult test launches and a recent rocket explosion, the company is at the top of its game. They’ve got a number of contracts with various government agencies and with private companies to launch satellites and the like.
And also very exciting for the company is the fact that they’ve received their first order from NASA to transport astronauts to the International Space Station next year. That’s a big deal, because since NASA ended the space shuttle program in 2011 and our astronauts have been hitching rides with Russian missions. This makes SpaceX the first private company to handle manned missions for NASA, something that sets them apart from the competition.
That competition includes United Launch Alliance, a joint venture by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which long held a virtual monopoly on government satellite launches. Among SpaceX’s recent victories was wining the right to bid on security and military launches, which will certainly help pay the bills while they work towards manned launches.