Slashdot Mirror
SpaceX To Shift Starship Work From California To Texas
SpaceX is reportedly shifting its work on prototypes of its next-gen "Starship" launch vehicle from Los Angeles to Texas. The news comes less than a week after the aerospace company announced its plans to lay off 10% of its 6,000-person workforce to tackle its more ambitious projects. An anonymous reader shares the report from Space.com: In a statement, SpaceX said it was now planning to build prototypes of its Starship vehicle, the upper stage of its next-generation reusable launch system, at its site in South Texas originally designed to serve as a launch site. An initial prototype version of that vehicle has been taking shape in recent weeks at the site in advance of 'hopper' tests that could begin in the next one to two months. A shift to South Texas, industry sources said, could be a way to reduce expenses, given the lower cost of living there versus the Los Angeles area. However, that region of Texas has a much smaller workforce, particularly in aerospace, compared to Southern California.
Yeah, when your workers need to make enough to buy a million dollar house that would go for $250k in Texas California seems pretty expensive doesn't it...
That reason is plenty of easily developed land, and policies which encourage home building instead of nimby horseshit that strangles home construction until even a hovel sells for a million dollars.
Alot of people don't have a successful startup or massive paycheck in their future. They need to live somewhere too...
Yeah, when your workers need to make enough to buy a million dollar house that would go for $250k in Texas California seems pretty expensive doesn't it...
Buy a house? No, no, no . . . that's not the plan at all.
SpaceX employees will be given cheap options as beta testers to rent a Tesla Model Mobile Home M, or a Tesla Model Trailer Park Trailer T.
The Boring Company will dig big underground trailer parks.
The future of humanity is electric, and underground. It will prepare us for life on Mars.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I doubt you are earning 400% more, but sure...
Only housing is 400% more expensive. Gas is about 20% more. Most other things are about the same. Fresh produce is cheaper.
If you are getting a high California salary, and willing to live cheaply, you can save a ton of money.
When I moved to Silicon Valley, I lived in my van for two years. Then I got a private office, and slept on a roll-up mat. After a year of that, I had enough for a downpayment on a house, and rode the California real estate rollercoaster from there.
There is no "exodus of people and companies from California to Texas". Including in this case. Did you forget that you're reading Slashdot, your source for the news of three days ago? ;) Work is not "moving from" California; only prototypes are being built in Texas (because it's impractical to transport prototypes to Texas by ship for testing). Musk notes that in this case that the misinformation wasn't the LA Times's fault, it was SpaceX's fault for giving an unclear press statement.
Hey, guys, I'm just pleased as punch to report that it's a fleet of a hundred Vogon Battle Destroyers!
In the real world, new companies keep starting or expanding in the state. Facebook has expanded in Menlo Park. Google is buying all the available properties in downtown San Jose for redevelopment. Los Angeles has had a construction boom for the last 10 years that has not slowed down. California still has a positive migration from other states. It is mostly the poor and lower middle classes that are leaving the state.
Tolerant liberals on display once again.
Next up, we will call a bunch of high school kids racists and bigots because they wore red hats. Oh wait.
Good riddance. We don't need low class thugs or middle class nobodies. They can't and won't understand our values of beauty and internationalism. In our kinder, gentler liberal future society we cannot allow those deplorable inferior brutes to exist.
The sad reality of US politics today is that I can read your text and still don't know if you're trolling or completely serious.
Only housing is 400% more expensive. Gas is about 20% more. Most other things are about the same. Fresh produce is cheaper.
Housing is by far most people's biggest cost so that's not a minor thing. Let's get some better data Cost of housing in San Francisco is about 7X that of the US average and California overall is about 3X that of the US average. Median house price in California is around $500K and in the Bay Area it is over a million. Groceries are more expensive on average in CA, albeit modestly so. Gas and transportation in CA are 40-70% more expensive. Gas prices in the Bay area as I type this are around $3.40/gal versus around $2.10/gal in the midwest. That is ~60% more expensive for those counting at home.
So the tl;dr version is that CA has substantially and provably more expensive cost of living than most of the country. Not saying that is a good or bad thing, but it is a fact. If Silicon Valley or Manhattan is where you need to be to get where you want to go then do what you need to do. But there is a price tag attached to that.
When I moved to Silicon Valley, I lived in my van for two years.
I'm going to stop you right there. Obviously you didn't have a wife, children, and were young enough to find that a palatable option. (or if you had any of the above you had a VERY unusual wife) That sort of thing is fine when you are young, single, and have limited responsibilities and social obligations outside of work. If you are all about the job and in a position to do that then good on you but few people can or will live that sort of lifestyle and expecting others to do it is unrealistic.
Then I got a private office, and slept on a roll-up mat.
Yeah there are damn few employers who would be ok with you sleeping in the office. Maybe that sort of thing is normal at some companies where you are but that is not normal in general. Certainly not outside silicon valley.
Here's an interesting fact: the 3.7 meter Falcon 9 cores are the largest size boosters that SpaceX could get away designing to be transported on roads without making it entirely uneconomical. Here we're talking about nine meter tankage. I can't see that getting from LA to Texas in any other way than through Panama...which is both expensive and inconvenient. And slow.
Ezekiel 23:20
Company after company has moved away from high-tax, high-cost California to low-tax, low-cost Texas.
California's big government system is so pension-debt riddled that Californians pay more and get less, and in return get unsafe streets, failing roads, failing schools, and sky-high housing prices.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Only housing is 400% more expensive. Gas is about 20% more. Most other things are about the same.
Actually, Texas is cheaper in many categories.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/ktvu-...
In recent years, the migration wave has gained steam as housing prices soar far past other states, but the exodus has been going on for some time, according to the study. Figures show the state has seen net resident losses to other states for more than 15 consecutive years.
Still California's population continues to grow, as the number of births exceeded the number of deaths by about 220,000 in 2017, the study noted.
Figures also show there was an additional 185,000 people that immigrated to the state last year from outside the country.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Also many areas of Texas have no zoning laws. The Towns/Counties arent telling people what is and is not allowed. They just let the free market handle it, and it works.
Ah, you mean no-zoning like in West, Texas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
TL:DR -- A free-market fertiliser plant blew up, killing fifteen Americans and injuring 160, destroying and damaging homes and a school sited next to the plant because there were no zoning regulations.
I'm in the Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks area of SoCal and when I travel to Texas I really can't tell the difference.
Same endless suburbia, same big-box retail, same dining options, so as far as "middle class" life is concerned, I see no difference.
-Oh yes, there's the hills and mountains, but nobody here ever goes on them, nor does anyone build on them and other than the occasional brush fire that brings them to everyone's attention for a brief while, they make no difference other than making the travel & commute shitty and concentrating housing into a fewer areas thus driving up costs of it.
So what's wrong again with "Texas" and why are we supposed to hate it?
Everyone I know in Michigan where I grew up pays a higher percent of their income for housing than anyone I know in California where I live now.
That is factually untrue. Plus I very much doubt you have any idea what percent of your friends/family's income they spend on housing - it's just not the sort of thing people share. People in Michigan spend on substantially less both in total dollars and as a percent of income. There are other data sources too and they ALL show California near or at the top of the most expensive states to live in no matter if you are talking in total dollars or percent of income.
The salaries more than make up for it.
The salaries demonstrably do NOT make up the difference.
There is a price to freedom: fools suffer. There is a benefit to freedom: the wise prosper. It's a good trade-off.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I think what the above poster was worried about was californians coming here, driving up housing prices, and making the area unaffordable to locals.
I may already own my house, but a raise in property rates affects taxes which can knock me out of my house
Doesn't the new house construction increase supply? As a west coaster who went to CA for a job and then back home a few years later my impression of the CA home market is that government restrictions on supply are the main culprit for the high cost of housing there. As long as supply can work to meet demand it seems like things should mostly stay in check.
Remember the demand side. When the Cali retirees moved here, they drove prices up. Yes, a lot of contractors made houses, but these people were willing to pay a lot of money. The demand definitely outstripped the supply.
As a reference, my house darn near doubled in price - during the great depression. I still get a lot of offers from real estate companies. A lot of these Cali transplants bought big McMansions, while I bought my house as a single story. Now that they are aged quite a bit, the McMansion isn't so appealing.
One of the funniest things is that most covenents in the developments banned single story houses. Which is exactly what people want now.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I never quite get this line of argument. In a "natural capitalist" society you would expect more desirable places to live to be more expensive, while less desirable places would be cheaper. And yet, people who claim to be capitalists somehow use California's expensive status as a sign that things are going wrong here...
1. Depending on exactly what time-frame you use (say within the last 20 years) you can make the argument that either Texas or California is doing better on GDP gains.
2. Texas has been doing better for a while on number of jobs added
3. California has been doing better on wages added (so less new jobs, but those jobs pay a lot more)
4. Texas's gains have largely been in gas/oil production (so will run out) where California's seem to be based on Film and IT, either of which could suddenly decide to flee the state (although there is no real sign of that).
So when you get down to brass tacks, there is no real evidence that one approach is generically better than the other.
It's not just houses: water and roads are also in short supply. If we build more dwellings, freeways will be triple-jammed and water yet even more scarce. There are ways around such, but they are not easy and will require life changes.
Maybe we should find a way to fill underutilized areas back up, like the North East and the rust belt. Dwellings sit empty there. We are out of kilter somehow.
Table-ized A.I.
Wait. That makes no sense.
The people who would have been responsible for the "planning" are the same people that decided where to put the school. Whatever they consider "sensible" got implemented, and we see the results.
Why is there an assumption that people get smart if they land a government position?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba