In 2006, a small, little-known company named Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — SpaceX, for short — won a NASA contract to ferry cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.
At that moment, SpaceX had not yet launched anything to orbit and would not succeed until two years later with its tiny Falcon 1 rocket. But since then, the Elon Musk-founded company has become the linchpin of all American civilian and military spaceflight.
It started in 2010 with the launch of the first Falcon 9 rocket. By 2012 the launcher was sending cargo to…