A 2010 SpaceX Office Tour with Elon Musk Shows What the Company was Like During the Early Days

Elon Musk walks into the camera frame, casually dressed in a simple gray polo shirt, preparing to lead viewers on a tour of the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. This part has been available since November 2010, a full 15 years ago, but it nonetheless depicts the unicorn startup at a key period, just weeks before Dragon became the first privately built spacecraft to reach orbit and return intact.

Hawthorne’s historic facility formerly produced bodies for Boeing 747s. Today, the five hundred thousand square feet are crammed to the rafters with the heart of all things SpaceX. Musk reveals that engineers develop and build over 80% of the Falcon rockets on-site, a far larger than the small El Segundo warehouse where they began.

Musk begins the tour in the lobby, which is currently plain white, but he hopes to jazz it up shortly. However, the emphasis remains on completing the task without bragging. Next, he moves on to the engineering floors, which have three levels in total, however only the ground floor was particularly active in 2010. Each of these floors can easily accommodate three hundred individuals.

The layout is one large open concept area with cubicles scattered around. Musk also describes how this system is intended to keep teams in constant communication with one another. He observes that private offices are rather uncommon in these parts, with the exception of HR and finance, which must maintain confidentiality. He’s visible behind a large glass wall, so anyone can stop by for a visit.

People are spread out all over the place, with computer displays and rocket part models on every desk. Matt is busy developing assembly instructions for some of the Dragon’s Draco thrusters. Another team nearby is fine-tuning a sample of one of those thrusters in preparation for the duty of handling some of the extremely precise movements required to get the Dragon into and around orbit, as well as directing the re-entry burns.

Conference rooms line the walls, each named after a pioneering rocket engineer or scientist, and have copper frames to match. A larger room for visiting customers features glass walls that may be misted over to provide privacy if necessary. Sales staff are already excited about some of the deals they’ve secured for Falcon 1 launches, Falcon 9 missions, and Dragon cargo trips to the International Space Station.

Beyond the offices, there are numerous more sites where the Falcon 9 stages and Merlin engines are built and tested. With a number of recent successful launches under their credit, the business is now working hard to get to the stage where they can fly with passengers on board. The Dragon capsule is preparing for its big December demo.