SpaceX is bound for Seattle as part of Elon Musk's great big plan to build a colony in Mars. The company is creating an engineering office that will spell gains for Washington.
Washington is already a world center for airline production, and it's not entirely new to spacecraft construction. SpaceX is heartily welcomed into the fold.
Robert Winglee, University of Washington's earth and space sciences department chairman, is happy about the company's arrival as it will be bringing critical mass. He also estimates that about six departments and colleges at the University of Washington will benefit from SpaceX's presence, all highly qualified to provide the company with employees and research as it expands.
Musk predicted that the Seattle office will be employing several hundred people, going up to a thousand in the next three to four years.
"We're going to try and do for satellites what we've done for rockets," he said.
Satellites are important to Musk's goals of establishing a human settlement on the Red Planet. Through the Seattle office, he'd be able to build a commercial satellite business that will give him the communications know-how and revenue he would need to fulfill his dreams of Martian living.
SpaceX just needs to get a lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force out of the way to completely start on its satellite business. It sued the Air Force for apparently creating a monopoly for satellite launches, which is illegal. Musk is, however, hopeful a settlement will be reached.
Once the concerns with the Air Force are ironed out, the company can focus on expanding its business beyond NASA contracts, hoping to take a cut out of the $70 billion budget that the Pentagon is looking to spend on satellite launches until 2030.
SpaceX was founded in 2002. At the moment, it's fulfilling resupply missions to the International Space Station for NASA, the most recent of which the company tried to use as a way to test technology for recapturing launch rockets. Though unsuccessful at this attempt, SpaceX is confident it will be able to pull off what it wants to do on Jan. 29. The goal is to achieve a soft vertical touchdown on top of an unmanned recovery vessel as big as a U.S. football field.
The company's Dragon spacecraft will be on display at the Museum of Flight from Saturday to Monday.
