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SpaceX Set To Create 300 New US Jobs and Expand Facilities
littlesparkvt writes The SpaceX manufacturing plant in McGregor, TX is set to spend $46 million on an expansion that would create 300 full-time jobs. SpaceX is proposing to invest $46.3 million in the site during the next five years. They will spend $32.4 million in real property improvements and $13.9 million in personal property improvements.
See their official job advertisment: http://www.spacex.com/careers/position/5749
And money.
Besides, $34M is puny even by Texas standards. Here in N.Y. that can't even buy an election.
McGregor facility is a testing facility - it is used to test rocket engines and complete stages. ...unless they are adding manufacturing to the site. I doubt they will, considering that the site expansion is mostly about adding SpaceX-controlled area around the test stands so they do not need to warn & clear those areas of local people - farmers mostly - before each test. Same reason (risk of testing Kaboom always present for such test facilities) would probably mean that one wouldn't set up expensive manufacturing machinery right next to the potentially explosive test stands...
New staff = more stages and engines to be tested as launch rate goes up, nothing more. So far SpaceX hasn't yet managed to launch even once a month but their schedule for next year is already getting close to one launch every two weeks. To keep engines and stages flowing through the testing requires more staff. Duh.
Is this the local-chamber-of-commerce estimate for 'job creation', to be totted out when whoring for subsidies, or the actually shows up in the 'help wanted' section number?
I have nothing against SpaceX in particular; but it is not exactly a secret that "Will create(or, sometimes, if you are a horrible human being 'grow') eleventy-zillion jobs!!!" is the earliest and most ubiquitous claim for any and all plans looking for tax breaks and zoning variances. Hell, when assorted professional sports teams are demanding that taxpayers build their stadiums because, um, reasons, they invariably manage to produce numbers alleging that a few janitorial and hot-dog seller positions will somehow be god's gift to the local economy, and totally worth the several hundred million dollars.
To make use of the land around the test site.
I would have thought they would be better using a local farmer. Someone somewhere should have said "We make rockets, we're not farmers, sub-contract it."
Did you read it as Space sex instead of Space X, that might explain the confusion, in your case
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I would be very interested in applying for something as cool as working for Space-X. I have experience in aerospace, software development, aerodynamics, cryogenics, embedded hardware development, and non-IP embedded network engineering.
I would be. But.. Mcgregor, Texas? And are these jobs even real, or are they just ones that exist in the mind of PR-wonk? I'd have to relocate, learn a new language or two. I do not speak Texan, which might be a bit of a deal breaker. Would the benefits out weigh the costs?
SpaceX is expanding, nice to hear. Now if they can just get an even shake at getting launch contracts I think we'll see more advancement in the next two decades then we've seen in the past four. Here's hoping that their coming reusability test flight (19th I believe) works out. If it works and they get enough launches a year out of Cape Canaveral they could probably buy an old oil rig and set it up permanently out in the Atlantic to recover first stages and ship them back to the cape for reuse.
300 workers is not much. Is that even worth a article at Slashdot?
Isnt that what is needed per HOUR in the US to keep the imployment steady? (2.5million per year)
I happened to watch the Barbara Walter albeit brief segment on Elon Musk last night and I was stunned that the mount of money he got not just for selling PayPal but for selling his first company to Compaq. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Not only have I never heard of that first company but Compaq doesn't exist anymore and who knows if HP is doing anything with what they acquired when the bought Compaq. I have the same questions about friggin' Instagram, Whatsapp, et al. Who decides what these companies are valued at and on what basis? It's clearly not based on company profits because many of them have no profits. In a lot of cases, the product or service that the company has isn't unique, is pointless fluff, or will be obsolete in short order. Or is it all about having representation, an agent or lawyer or whatever, that is able to convince others that their client is worth a lot like Hollywood agents do?
I don't get your complaint. Are you really expecting Elon Musk to personally hire every American into one of his companies?
Also, there aren't more astronauts in the NASA astronaut corps currently. A total in the entire history from the original Mercury 7 astronauts to right now is 339 candidates have "received their wings" to be certified as astronauts, and not all of them have even been into space. The current number is 43, and likely to go down in the near future.
On the other hand, this is 300 new jobs for the people of central Texas, and I think they don't mind high paying industrial jobs that bring in money from outside of the immediate area, unlike new jobs that come from Wal-Mart of a Subway restaurant opening up. This is on top of other substantial moves that the companies of Elon Musk have been doing to hire literally thousands of new workers in the past couple of years.
If only more entrepreneurs had this kind of vision to do something really unique and original.
Yeah, because all of that money is going to go only to the 300 people & Elon Musk, who will only be allowed to put it in their mattress or spend it over seas, and anything left over will be dumped in a hole and buried. The company won't need any raw resources and won't use that money to contract out other businesses and people to make and do things for them. It is not like they actually make a physical object that needs stuff from other people or could be used by other businesses when done.
Elon has talked the legislature into giving over $10 million in subsidies. He mentioned his BFR rocket factory, which won't get built for a long time, and he'll demand more subsidies when he does. Legislatures get seduced by sexy industries (show biz, Breaking Bad was in Albuquerque for a reason), and SpaceX is very sexy. Now that Rick Perry is gone, I hope this will all stop.
So, my preferences are, fulled automated rocket launches, and zero subsidies from the legislature.
Wow! America's back!