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SpaceX Indicates It Will Manufacture the BFR Rocket In Los Angeles (arstechnica.com)
A new document from the Port of Los Angeles indicates that the company is moving ahead with plans to build a "state-of-the-art" industrial manufacturing facility near Long Beach, about 20 miles south of its headquarters. It's possible that the facility may be used to manufacture the company's Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR vehicle, which is expected to measure 106 meters tall and nine meters wide. The Long Beach location makes sense since the BFR will be so large that it needs to be built near water where it can be transported. Ars Technica reports: The company seeks to use an 18-acre site at Berth 240 in the port "for the construction and operation of a facility to manufacture large commercial transportation vessels." Operations at the site would include "research and development of transportation vessels and would likely include general manufacturing procedures such as welding, composite curing, cleaning, painting, and assembly operations." Completed vessels would need to be transported by water due to their size, the document states, as a means to explain why the company needs a facility immediately adjacent to the water. The document also noted that the 10-year lease, with up to two 10-year renewals, would "accommodate recovery operations undertaken by Space Exploration Technologies to bring to shore vehicles returning from space that are retrieved by an autonomous drone ship offshore." This would be for first-stage recoveries of the Falcon 9 rocket and probably payload fairings as well.
If you yell Big Falcon Rocket really aggressively it sounds like big fuckin rocket.
You're off your rocker.
You mean something like, "Hey that one Big Falcon Rocket".
I think the way the boosters separate after take off means that it is a Big Forking Rocket, however I wouldn't know because I am not a forking rocket scientist.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
That's not what BFR stands forâ¦
Elon even said his Tesla trucks have BAMF performance. How the hell do you expect anyone to believe that BFR means "Bog Falcon Rocket?"
How many more accidents do you want to cause because you can't use CONSISTENT units, let alone the good, normal, international ones ?!
Actually, manufacturing the BFR in California is not so obvious. The only launchpad they own outright (once construction is complete), rather than the 3 they are currently leasing, is in southeast Texas. Sure they could boat the rocket from California to Texas' eastern coast via the Panama Canal... but having the manufacturing be close enough to ship via land easily, or at least on the same coastline would make more sense. I find it more likely that this California facility will produce cheaper, high-volume rockets launched from the west coast (probably Falcon 9's), or relatively small components that can be easily shipped across the country (crew capsules). It's possible the new spaceport coming online around the same time as the BFR won't be used to launch the latter, I suppose.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
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...like a PIN number, or an ATM machine?
LA sounds a good place to build BFR and a space port.
^(oo)^pig~
It's Big fucking rocket. Get the name right man. It's Big Fucking Rocket!!!
BFR Rocket?
(I'm almost entirely kidding)
And yet, CA is not only the largest manufacturer state in America, but they outdo the next 2 combined.
Not true. While California does have the most manufacturing jobs in total (hardly surprising given it has the biggest population) at around 1.2 million, the next two are Texas (840K) and Ohio (660K). And per-capita California isn't even in the top 10 either by revenue or by percent of workforce. There are WAY more manufacturing jobs in the Midwest than there are in California and the cost of living is much lower as well. Taking the states from the midwest as a group just from the top 10 they total over 2.7 million manufacturing jobs.
The fact is, that highly paid engineers would rather live in CA than.states like Texas, or Alabama, or Mississippi, or ...
Ahh, the arrogance of people thinking wherever they live must be the best. Ok smart guy, explain why there are WAY more manufacturing jobs and highly paid engineers in manufacturing in the Midwest than they are in your beloved California. Explain why there are more aerospace engineering jobs with equally high wages on the East coast. California is the leading state for some types of engineering (esp computer) but other parts of the country are stronger in other areas. And Texas especially has no lack of highly paid engineers.
There is nothing wrong with California but you don't have to tear down places you don't live and know little about to make it sound better.
It makes a lot of sense to keep the engineers working on different parts of the rocket in close proximity - rather than half a continent away.
It does provided that it doesn't create a massive logistical hassle getting the finished rocket to the launch pad. Ideally you'd want the manufacturing to be as close as possible to where the rocket gets launched to keep costs low. Obviously that isn't the only consideration but its an important one. SpaceX is pretty careful about that sort of thing though so I'm fairly confident they've thought it through.
If you want some interesting reading/watching sometime check out how they got the Saturn V to the launch pad from where it was made.
It's more like Walken as in Christopher Walken.
It mystifies me why anyone would put any new manufacturing in California, with high taxes and even higher cost of living. If you need to be on the coast there are lots of other states on the water, most of which don't involve sailing through the Panama Canal just to reach the east coast...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Big Fc**ing Rocket.
Look here http://www.wired.co.uk/article/elon-musk-bfr-big-rocket-earth-mars-spacex
They should've looked at the abandoned Aerojet facility in Miami - quick intracoastal access up to Cape Canaveral from here.
https://www.abandonedfl.com/ae...
-a.e.mossberg
It's not a sense of superiority, most other places really are superior. Shame you are so isolated from reality that you didn't realise yet.
BFR Rocket
Big
Falcon
Rocket
Rocket
Good job, BeauHD.