Spacely Sprockets

I got to tour the SpaceX facilities in El Segundo and talk to some representatives of the company. In case you're wondering, I couldn't take any pictures.

SpaceX has six buildings in the El Segundo area; I got to see four of them. None of them seemed very big, like what you'd expect from a plant where EELV-class rockets are built. The company had some hardware on display and I found it all to be very interesting.

Meeting with SpaceX officials went well. A lot of my questions were answered, and I learned enough to ask more questions that had previosuly slipped my mind. The performance numbers they presented during the meeting looked a lot better than what I had been seeing for the past few months. Hopefully the upcoming launch of FalconSat II will confirm them.

The thing that impressed me most about the company is that they're constantly learning new techniques as they're going along building rockets. Improvements are continually being added at every step of production. SpaceX is a company that's hungry, and hungry companies are going to turn the space launch business on its ear.