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SpaceX Indicates It Will Manufacture the BFR Rocket In Los Angeles (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the large-commercial-transportation-vessels dept.

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.

61 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. BFR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    If you yell Big Falcon Rocket really aggressively it sounds like big fuckin rocket.

    1. Re:BFR by mfh · · Score: 1

      As long as it's not BAD FUCKING ROCKET, we'll be ok. =)

      --
      The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
    2. Re:BFR by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      It's already a Big Flying Rocket at that point in time, isn't it?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:BFR by dwywit · · Score: 1

      But according to the headline on this article, it's a Big Falcon Rocket Rocket.

      Just like an ATM machine or a PIN number.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    4. Re:BFR by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

      Because rocketry out of the Earth's thick atmosphere and gravity well is still edgy engineering in an unforgiving environment. Each new company coming into the field has to learn that all over again.

    5. Re:BFR by sabbede · · Score: 1

      I bet that's what Musk calls it in private.

    6. Re:BFR by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      In some languages, such phrasing is actually necessary since abbreviations can't be inflected in them.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    7. Re:BFR by MrKaos · · Score: 1

      It's already a Big Flying Rocket at that point in time, isn't it?

      yeah, and Bloody Fast too.

      --
      My ism, it's full of beliefs.
    8. Re:BFR by jimtheowl · · Score: 1

      And if you say it really low, with your inner voice, it says that anyway.

    9. Re:BFR by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      and if they have some unintended motor shutdown or a payload shift, it could become a big flipping rocket.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    10. Re:BFR by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      or a NIC card!

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    11. Re:BFR by quenda · · Score: 2

      Not a coincidence, Beavis.
      Musk has said that the BFR name is derived from the BFG weapon in Doom.
      The humour lies in implying (but not saying) Big Fucking Rocket. The "falcon" version came later.

    12. Re:BFR by michelcolman · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      Actually, the one with the side boosters is the Falcon Heavy. Different rocket.

      BFR has no side boosters: just one big spaceship with a big booster underneath. The spaceship can also fly by itself without the booster and would even be capable of single stage to orbit according to Musk. They plan to test that part next year (on the Musk calendar, which differs from the Gregorian calendar by a few years).

    13. Re:BFR by michelcolman · · Score: 1

      He could also have gone for "big friendly rocket"

    14. Re:BFR by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      It also suggests that Musk named his rockets Falcon just to set this up. Falcon isn't a bad name for a rocket family, but doing it to set up a pun seems a little much.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  2. Re: Manufacturing anything in California by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And yet, CA is not only the largest manufacturer state in America, but they outdo the next 2 combined. The fact is, that highly paid engineers would rather live in CA than.states like Texas, or Alabama, or Mississippi, or ...

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  3. BFR by MrKaos · · Score: 1

    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.
  4. Not Texas? by mentil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Not Texas? by blkhawk · · Score: 1

      Well, why not just fly the assembled BFR to the launch pads they are to be used at suborbitally? I think that's whats eventually gonna happen.

    2. Re:Not Texas? by Vitus+Wagner · · Score: 1

      I think that they should drive rocket from California to Texas using its own power.

    3. Re:Not Texas? by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      but having the manufacturing be close enough to ship via land easily

      The rocket size exceeds typical road clearance, so shipping over land is not an option for most destinations.

    4. Re:Not Texas? by dehachel12 · · Score: 1

      maybe with drones ?

    5. Re:Not Texas? by dehachel12 · · Score: 1

      the first stage weights 3,065,000 kg. with drones able to carry 100Kgs, that would take 30650 drones. hmm, that's not really realistic ...

    6. Re:Not Texas? by alvinrod · · Score: 1

      That seems unusually heavy. I know that it isn't going to be light, but are you giving the weight with fuel? Seems like it would be much easier, and no doubt safer, to ship it empty regardless of how it's being moved.

    7. Re:Not Texas? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Berth 240 (the property mentioned in the article) also has rail access. I don't think something this big could ship on rail, but Boeing has (and continues to?) ship 737 fuselages by rail...

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    8. Re:Not Texas? by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 1

      Might be an issue of resources in Hawthorne. Much easier to wed the two and optimize short-term benefits-- there is a lot invested at Hawthorne.

    9. Re:Not Texas? by Catbeller · · Score: 2

      SpaceX won't be making many Block 5 Falcon 9s. They're reusable up to a hundred times with refurbishment, ten times without, they hope. They are already deliberately dunking the Block 3s into the ocean - they don't need them anymore, and they're out of storage room.

      I agree that havng the factory next to Boca Chica makes more sense, but they said they're shipping them via the Panama Canal. I guess the talent doesn't want to relocate from LA to Brownsville Texas.

      That factory is gonna build spaceships.

    10. Re:Not Texas? by dehachel12 · · Score: 1

      I wondered about that myself, but I could not find 'empty weight'. but even when it only weighs 1000t, it would still take 10000 drones.

    11. Re:Not Texas? by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, reality blows a hole the size of Texas into your nonsensical fantasy (it's so disconnected from reality, I cannot in good conscience call it a theory): BFR can't be shipped by land, it has to go by sea. The "cheap high volume rockets" you fantasize about don't exist, and F9's are *already* being produced (and being shipped by land) on the west coast. In the same vein, a production facility for capsules and engines (which can also be shipped by land) already exists. As their existing facility (just twenty miles away) has capacity to spare, it makes no sense to build a new one. As land transport provides no significant barrier, it makes no sense to move their existing facility. (And if they wished to ease land transport, they wouldn't be moving to Long Beach in the first place.)

      Or, in short, the facility makes no sense whatsoever for any of SpaceX's existing product line.

      There's only one product in their line that requires a new facility, and by coincidence that one product also absolutely requires access to sea transport - BFR.

      As to why they'd locate it on the west coast rather than the Gulf or east coasts... Why would the locate it anywhere else? Sea transport, even with the added costs of transiting the Canal, is relatively cheap. Just up the road is 100% (or close enough to make no nevermind) of their management, engineering, and manufacturing expertise and capability. Locating the facility elsewhere cuts access to this expertise.

    12. Re:Not Texas? by quenda · · Score: 1

      Yes, 3000 tons is the fully fuelled mass.
        I don't think they have publicly stated the dry mass, but it will be a small fraction of that.
      Falcon 9 first stage dry mass is only 5% of the fuelled mass. Its mostly fuel tanks.

      So I'm guessing 100 to 150 tons. You could probably strap that on top of a 747, like they did with the shuttle orbiter. Or the An-225.

    13. Re:Not Texas? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      The rocket size exceeds typical road clearance, so shipping over land is not an option for most destinations.

      They could do what they did with the shuttle boosters: Manufacture in sections, ship them by rail, and then connect the sections with O rings.

      That worked well.

    14. Re:Not Texas? by mentil · · Score: 1

      I'm wondering why they don't recover the obsolete engines and sell them for scrap. All that aluminum must be worth the recovery costs, right?

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  5. Big "Fat" Rocket in LA! by dslmodem · · Score: 1

    LA sounds a good place to build BFR and a space port.

    --

    ^(oo)^pig~

  6. No, it's not "big falcon rocket" by f00zbll · · Score: 1

    It's Big fucking rocket. Get the name right man. It's Big Fucking Rocket!!!

  7. Why the need for water transport? by sabbede · · Score: 1
    Why not just launch it from the manufacturing site and land it at the destination? Its landability is the big selling point, right?

    (I'm almost entirely kidding)

    1. Re:Why the need for water transport? by SkyratesPlayer · · Score: 1

      Since
      1. They already know how to land on a barge,
      2. SeaLaunch proved you can launch from a floating platform (based in Long Beach, btw),
      3. you want miles of emptiness around you when launching, especially during development,
      4. there was a floating rocket port in the BFR presentation,
      I expect SpaceX to eventually build a launch barge that will set out from LA, go south and/or west, and launch; first to another barge, later to their facilities in FL and TX.

    2. Re:Why the need for water transport? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 2

      You could also skip the floating platform and just launch directly from the water, such as the proposed "Sea Dragon" superheavy lifter vehicle designed in the 60s would. Note that this design was roughly 40% taller than the Saturn V.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  8. Tearing down places you don't live by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Tearing down places you don't live by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The funny thing is that you complain that he's 'cherry picking' data while adding together the largest 10 midwestern states to achieve an 'eye-popping' number. You also fail to mention that California has more than 1.2 million non-farm manufacturing jobs, which while not exactly as he claims is not 'more than the next two combined', as Texas and Ohio have 1.5 according to your source, it's easy to understand why he might have seen such a claim in the past. Texas also has a large population and in fact has a lower per capita rate of manufacturing jobs. In short it's clear that you are using facts like a drunk man uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination. His general argument was that CA has many manufacturers, perhaps he was a little 'fast and loose' with a general fact, but you had looked up the numbers and presented them only for supporting your 'it's not so great' argument.

    2. Re:Tearing down places you don't live by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      uh, the fact that that there are so many UNFILLED jobs in Texas should speak volumes.
      BTW, CA is not my place. I live in Colorado. And I was born in Mississippi, and lived in more than a dozen states, mostly in south ( including Arkansas AND Texas) and midwest. I still Relatives all over Michigan and Ohio who are still various items such as manufacturing. To be fair, both sides of our family has spread around the globe, but, that happens with real education or being part of the military.
      BUT, a good example, is that L-mart has the space engineering in Colorado. Where do they manufacturer? Alabama.
      Raytheon, Boeing, etc all have engineers in various places, but by far, they have washington, oregon, CA, Colorado, St. Louis (go figure), and yes, some of the east coast.
      And I SERIOUSLY doubt that any state in the mid west has more engineers than CA. Tx would not come close.

      As to arrogance, nope. I just prefer the facts.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  9. Logistics? by sjbe · · Score: 1

    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.

  10. Re:Miles and meters ? USA, FFS ! by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    Love the British show "Top Gear", where everything is expressed in miles, miles per hour and horsepower.

  11. The proper pronunciation of "Falcon" by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 1

    It's more like Walken as in Christopher Walken.

  12. Why put new manufacturing in CA? by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    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
    1. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by duckintheface · · Score: 1

      Hmmm. Could it be that high taxes correlate to good quality of life? Maybe if Texas taxed rich people and corporations like California does, it could afford to build a more livable society for its citizens. And then maybe SpaceX engineers would want to live there.

      --
      "He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
    2. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by bobbied · · Score: 1

      Because.. That's where the engineers are (or so the theory goes).

      I don't know many engineering folks who'd relish living in/around Brownsville TX, the Louisiana coast or other available areas on the east side of the canal.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    3. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 1

      It mystifies me why anyone would put any new manufacturing in California, with high taxes and even higher cost of living.

      I suppose it depends on what you're manufacturing.

      It's not necessarily a bad thing to have engineers close to manufacturing--especially for something as technical as a rocket. If changes need to be made, they can happen quickly and conveniently. If the engineers are in California, it's worthwhile to have manufacturing in California.

      There's also a difference between "manufacturing" and "mass production." Yeah, if I were building 30 million widgets which I wanted to sell as cheaply as possible, I'd probably have it done in China. But SpaceX isn't going to build 30 million BFRs. Heck, I can't imagine them building more than 12 per year. Also, when you're charging millions of dollars per launch, the fact that the person assembling the fairings makes $20/hr in California versus $10/hr in Arkansas doesn't really drop the unit cost that much.

      As for transport, again, it's not like it makes that much difference. I've built the rocket, I stick it on the boat and it takes 2 months to go from Long Beach, CA, to Texas, say. If I built it in Texas, I could get it there in a week! But does that really make that much of difference--business-wise? I mean, are people going to be complaining because they have to wait 2 months for their giant payload to launch? Are they going to go to one of the competitors? I think not.

    4. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      Hmmm. Could it be that high taxes correlate to good quality of life?

      Having lived in a number of places, and having visited CA a lot, I can assure you there is little correlation between a high tax rate and quality of life.

      Even the weather in CA is not THAT great, though it's mildly warm much of the time.

      Maybe if Texas taxed rich people and corporations like California does

      I didn't even mention Texas. What a moron. But Houston does have better food (and greater diversity) than any city in CA. How is that not part of quality of life?

      I guess you just hate diversity. Suck it, racist CA lover.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    5. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      It's not necessarily a bad thing to have engineers close to manufacturing--especially for something as technical as a rocket. If changes need to be made, they can happen quickly and conveniently. If the engineers are in California, it's worthwhile to have manufacturing in California.

      Sure, but over time engineers are not going to want to live there either as house rates continue to climb. There are engineers that live all over the country - and engineers that want to work on rockets you'd think would be located more around Houston or the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I can see SpaceX maybe getting some use out of engineers that worked and lived in naval bases in California, so that would potentially be a draw.

      Also, when you're charging millions of dollars per launch, the fact that the person assembling the fairings makes $20/hr in California versus $10/hr in Arkansas doesn't really drop the unit cost that much.

      The fact that you are being taxed for materials per rocket at 15% more (or whatever) certainly does. It's not the taxes around the people, but the taxes around manufacturing that would worry me. Possibly Musk is getting a lot of tax breaks to locate the factory in CA though, so maybe that extra cost is mitigated.

      As for transport, again, it's not like it makes that much difference. I've built the rocket, I stick it on the boat and it takes 2 months to go from Long Beach, CA, to Texas, say. If I built it in Texas, I could get it there in a week! But does that really make that much of difference--business-wise?

      Holy shit yes. Given they are trying to re-fly these rockets that is a HUGE amount of downtime they could potentially be making money from. Not to mention the fuel costs to go all the way down to the Panama Canal and back, not to mention the fee to use the Panama Canal (probably around $500k for shipping a BFR).

      But more than anything, it is the opportunity cost that is the killer shipping them out from CA.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    6. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by michelcolman · · Score: 1

      Because most rocket launches are towards the east (which requires less energy thanks to the rotation of the earth), and trajectories over water are prefered for safety and noise reasons.

    7. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      Sure, but over time engineers are not going to want to live there either as house rates continue to climb.

      Housing costs are climbing pretty much anywhere the average person would want to live. California is not unique in this respect.
       

      engineers that want to work on rockets you'd think would be located more around Houston or the Kennedy Space Center in Florida

      You'd think that - but only if you didn't know that California is the hub of the aerospace industry, not Houston or Kennedy.
       

      Given they are trying to re-fly these rockets that is a HUGE amount of downtime they could potentially be making money from.

      That downtime is balanced against the need to attract engineers and workers to Bumfuck Texas... And separating the BFR activities from the existing management, engineering, technical, and manufacturing base already extant at the Hawthorne facilities a few miles down the road. I'd go for Long Beach too.
       

      Not to mention the fuel costs to go all the way down to the Panama Canal and back, not to mention the fee to use the Panama Canal (probably around $500k for shipping a BFR).

      You're talking a rocket costing in the high tens of millions of dollars per unit - a couple of million to ship it from CA to FL is no biggie.
       

      But more than anything, it is the opportunity cost that is the killer shipping them out from CA.

      That opportunity cost must be balanced against the costs (tangible and intangible and indirect) of manufacturing them elsewhere.

      tl;dr: You have no idea what you're talking about.

    8. Re: Why put new manufacturing in CA? by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      Hmmm. Could it be that high taxes correlate to good quality of life?

      Not in California, they certainly don't. In California, an unrealistically high salary correlates with good quality of life, despite the taxes.

    9. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by Cytotoxic · · Score: 1

      Houston does have surprisingly good Indian food.

    10. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by Cytotoxic · · Score: 1

      I don't know if he has any idea what he is talking about, but most of your assertions are also nonsense.

      There are lots of hubs of the aerospace industry, Cali being one of them. You've got Seattle, Atlanta, Huntsville, Houston, the Space Coast, Ogden.... Other aerospace companies are building new factories in these locations to take advantage of the existing workforce and the proximity to their customers.

      SpaceX is keeping manufacturing in Cali because that's where they already are and therefore that's where their workforce is. If they were in Seattle they'd stay there.

      Housing costs are not growing the same rate everywhere people want to live. They aren't even the same all over California. A major chunk of the huge costs in cities like NY, L.A. and San Francisco is the restrictive zoning laws that prevent housing from being built to meet demand. Meanwhile you have places like Houston, where housing is still quite affordable, despite the massive growth they've experienced.

      I'm sure SpaceX has a thought or two about what it would take to move their operations to Florida or Texas. The drop in taxes and real estate costs moving to central Florida has to be attractive. And the same goes for Texas. Both states have a native supply of workers with the requisite skills, and spaceX probably has no trouble recruiting nationally. I'd imagine that California will need to make sure that they don't push companies like SpaceX too hard, or they will relocate. Right now it would be severely disruptive to the company to pick up and move - considering their breakneck pace of development. That's probably the main reason they are not seriously considering a move at this point. But don't be surprised if they start adding locations elsewhere over the next decade.

      Look at what he's doing with Tesla. They are building massive factories across the country - not in their starting location of California. There are a lot of reasons for this. And none of those reasons are "California is totally the best and you can't recruit top engineers and skilled workers in other places".

      About the only salient point you make is that the cost of shipping the rocket to its final destination is not a deciding factor in locating the factory. (although the logistics of the thing is a deciding factor - the size of the new rockets dictating that final assembly take place near the port so that the finished rocket doesn't have to traverse city streets. )

    11. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by Alioth · · Score: 1

      Because the people with the skillsets to do these things want to live in California. Places that are nice tend to be expensive because there is high demand to live there, good old supply and demand at work. Places that are cheap tend to be cheap because they aren't all that desirable.

      Engineers that can command good pay probably don't want to live in mosquito infested places full of religious fundies such as Alabama. They probably don't want to live in the flyover states where there's no coast and fewer fun things to do during your time off. So if you want to attract the talent, you have to locate where the talent wants to live. The talent wants to live in California, not some bug ridden swamp full of fundies.

      --
      Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
    12. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      There are lots of hubs of the aerospace industry, Cali being one of them

      The one that's bigger than all the others you list - combined. To the extent that they are "hubs" that is... Seattle is an aerospace hub? Don't make me laugh. It has Boeing and Blue Origin... and not much else. Ditto Huntsville and Houston - largely NASA and NASA contractors. Etc... etc... In fact, I don't think you even grasp what "hub" means as a descriptive term.
       
      Etc... etc...
       
       

      And none of those reasons are "California is totally the best and you can't recruit top engineers and skilled workers in other places".

      Had I said that, you'd have a point. But I didn't. I laid out the reasons why quite clearly.
       
      So take your strawman and stuff it up your ass.

    13. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by Cytotoxic · · Score: 1

      Ha ha! Yeah... you got me.... Seattle only has Boeing.... The largest aerospace company in the world. That tiny little thing. More than double the size of all of the others, save Airbus.

      And the third biggest behind Airbus is Lockheed Martin. Sure, the Marietta facilities outside Atlanta from the Martin/Marietta days aren't fancy and new... but they are pretty big. Anyway, at least they are headquartered in Cali... Oh wait... no they aren't. They're over in Maryland, near DC where all that sweet government money is. Hey, maybe if you define it by "where is the money spent", DC is the hub of the aerospace industry. The cash Uncle Sam doles out certainly is the major player in the US.

      Anyway, whatever we do, let's not count NASA when we are dealing with all things aerospace... I mean, they are only the world's largest civilian aerospace agency and the prime drivers of the space industry so far. Maybe we should leave out defense contractors too? That way we can eliminate everything except for airlines and communications satellites as major players.

      And none of those reasons are "California is totally the best and you can't recruit top engineers and skilled workers in other places".

      Had I said that, you'd have a point. But I didn't. I laid out the reasons why quite clearly.

      Hmmmm.....

      That downtime is balanced against the need to attract engineers and workers to Bumfuck Texas...

      Yeah... not exactly word for word. But implying that Houston is an abyss where no reasonable person would wish to move is not really all that far away from that characterization. Certainly not straw-man territory. And since the "Californians are moving away to Texas" headline is so overdone as to almost be a trope at this point, claiming that it is so beyond the pale to attract workers to Texas that we can label their hypothetical destination as Bumfuck, Texas is more of a stretch.

      I get it. It is great to run around feeling superior. It makes people defensive to be challenged on their ill-thought-out opinions. And defensiveness can fill one with braggadocio that makes one turn to profanity, as if that actually bolstered their argument.

    14. Re:Why put new manufacturing in CA? by Cytotoxic · · Score: 1

      Anyway, my point was to provide a rebuke for the unnecessary and ill-conceived "you have no idea what you are talking about" directed at SuperKendall.

      I supported your point that shipping costs don't really enter into the equation, but nothing you replied with addressed his central point, which was about the time cost of shipping around through the Panama canal. It seems like you missed what he was getting at, so I'll take a swing at it on his behalf.

      So let's say that it takes the better part of a month to ship from Long Beach to Port Canaveral or Houston. And then another couple of days to unload and ship to the launch pad. So, about a month from door to door, so to speak. You might get it there quicker, but there's a lot of variables beyond your control when shipping intra-nationally in the US - you have to use a US flagged carrier, etc. So let's go with 4 weeks for simplicity's sake.

      Now, SuperKendall referenced reusability as a factor. Why? Because the planned cadence for one particular BFR is high. So, for the sake of argument, let's say they plan to launch the thing twice a week. That's 8 launches in our 4 week shipping window.

      How much would SpaceX stand to make from those 8 launches? Let's pretend they are going to profit $30 million per launch. That's almost a quarter of a billion dollars that they didn't make while it was waiting for a transit through the Panama canal. After they make and ship a half-dozen BFR from one side of the country to the other, the missed profit from having the thing sit on a boat instead of launching for paying customers is well over a billion dollars.

      So SuperKendall did have a point, and it wasn't stupid or profoundly ignorant. There is a fairly high opportunity cost under the assumptions that SpaceX will hit a very high cadence with their reusable BFR and that there will be enough paying customers to fill a manifest that looks like 40 launches per month.

      Of course, there's the flaw in the logic. If there was only 1 BFR, getting it up and running faster would be pure profit increase. Maybe the same goes for number two. But if they really have 24 hour reusability with these things... how many will they need, absent the point-to-point suborbital passenger service they speculated about? At some point shipping another core wouldn't result in any missed payloads, because the existing cores could service the entire manifest.

      At any rate, it was a point worth considering and it deserved better elaboration. And it certainly didn't deserve a trollish response.

       

  13. Re: Miles and meters ? USA, FFS ! by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    And Canada apparently.

  14. Re: Manufacturing anything in California by WindBourne · · Score: 1

    U must be in Texas.
    California still remains the most important economy going in America. Hell, CA is now the most important car building state in the nation. It is no longer Michigan. How many new car companies are attempting to start up in CA? Loads.
    How about space? CA and Wash are where it is at. Yeah, Texas is getting a luanch pad due to SX, but CA has multiple launch areas. And aeronautics? Well, texas has a some large aviation, but not as much space as CA.

    Look, I live in Colorado. Not CA. And I stay here because it is superior to places like CA/Tx. That is why we have so many shit heads like you moving here. BUT, given the choice of texas OR CA, I would take CA in a heartbeat. I lived in Irving and taught for NASA in Houston. No desire to go to such places.

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    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  15. Aerojet Miami by inicom · · Score: 2

    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...

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    -a.e.mossberg