{"id":13847,"date":"2018-04-21T18:37:47","date_gmt":"2018-04-21T10:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacex-to-build-bfr-factory-in-southern-california\/"},"modified":"2018-04-21T18:37:47","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T10:37:47","slug":"spacex-to-build-bfr-factory-in-southern-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacex-to-build-bfr-factory-in-southern-california\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX to build BFR factory in Southern California"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Artist\u2019s concept of SpaceX\u2019s planned spaceship on the moon. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SpaceX plans to build its massive BFR rocket boosters and spaceships inside a cavernous new factory at the Port of Los Angeles, officials announced this week.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti confirmed Monday during a State of the City address that SpaceX will produce its Big Falcon Rocket at a site at the Port of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis vehicle holds the promise of taking humanity deeper into the cosmos than ever before,\u201d Garcetti added on Twitter.<\/p>\n

SpaceX and port officials have discussed the aerospace company\u2019s use of a 19-acre waterfront parcel at the harbor since 2015, and the parties wrapped up lease negotiations last month. The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners on Thursday approved the agreement with SpaceX.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s huge new rocket will tower nearly 350 feet (106 meters) tall and span 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter, according to information presented by company founder Elon Musk last year.<\/p>\n

The reusable vehicle will come in two pieces.<\/p>\n

A booster stage, powered by 31 methane-fueled Raptor engines will produce nearly 12 million pounds of thrust and be capable of returning to Earth for propulsive vertical landings like SpaceX\u2019s existing Falcon rockets. An upper stage that doubles as an interplanetary transporter will carry people, supplies, satellites, and huge propellant tanks that can be refilled in space.<\/p>\n

Bruce McHugh, SpaceX\u2019s director of construction and real estate, told the Board of Harbor Commissioners on Thursday that the 19-acre site at Berth 240 \u201cis the perfect spot to build our big rocket.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX examined potential factory locations in Southern California, Florida, Louisiana and Texas before settling on the Port of Los Angeles location, according to Michael DiBernardo, the port\u2019s deputy executive director of marketing and customer relations.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Artist\u2019s illustration of the BFR in flight. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

McHugh said SpaceX needed a location with access to the water because the BFR is too big to transport on trucks, as the company currently moves its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters. A barge will pick up the BFR booster and upper stage, also known as the Big Falcon Spaceship, and transport them to their test sites and launch pad.<\/p>\n

The huge vehicle\u2019s design is still in the early stages, and SpaceX revamped the design of its mega-launcher over 2016 and 2017, ending up with a smaller rocket than Musk originally envisioned. But the BFR \u2014 in its current iteration \u2014 dwarfs all rockets currently flying in dimension and capability, and would measure roughly the same size as NASA\u2019s Saturn 5 moon rocket, while producing nearly twice as much thrust at liftoff as the Apollo-era launcher developed in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know exactly what we\u2019re building, but we know it\u2019s big, and we know it can\u2019t be trucked,\u201d McHugh said Thursday. \u201cSo that\u2019s why this spot has enough land, it\u2019s near the water, and we know that we could produce our product there.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX already leases land at the Port of Los Angeles as a base for the company\u2019s recovery fleet, which deploys into the Pacific Ocean to pick up Dragon capsules returning from the International Space Station and retrieve rocket boosters and payload fairings from Falcon 9s launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base northwest of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s headquarters and current manufacturing site is in Hawthorne, California, around 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of the port.<\/p>\n

McHugh said SpaceX intends to build an 80,000-square-foot (7,400-square-meter), 80-foot-tall (24-meter) fabrication hangar at the Berth 240 location within about a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we add onto it, it\u2019ll wind up being a total of a 200,000-square-foot (18,600-square-meter) building, assuming everything works out for us,\u201d McHugh said. \u201cWe are building a ship that\u2019s never been built before. We are doing research and technology that\u2019s never been done.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re also doing this in a parallel path. We are working on the means and methods of how we\u2019re going build this product. So far, it\u2019s going to be a composite-type rocket.\u201d<\/p>\n

McHugh said approximately 20 engineers and 20 production technicians are currently working on the BFR project. By the time the BFR is ready for full production, in roughly three-to-five years, McHugh estimated around 700 people will be working at the new factory.<\/p>\n

\u201cElon wants it way faster, but I think it\u2019s three-to-five years,\u201d McHugh said.<\/p>\n

Known for setting optimistic schedules, Musk set an \u201caspirational\u201d goal last year to have the BFR ready for a robotic mission to Mars by 2022, and a human voyage by 2024. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX\u2019s president and chief operating officer, said last month the BFR could be ready for test flights into Earth orbit in 2020.<\/p>\n

McHugh said the rockets built at the Port of Los Angeles will be shipped through the Panama Canal to Cape Canaveral for launch preparations.<\/p>\n

SpaceX officials have said in recent months that early atmospheric tests of the spaceship part of the BFR could begin next year, likely at the company\u2019s launch base in South Texas, which is still under construction.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A manufacturing tool for the BFR\u2019s interplanetary spaceship. Credit: Elon Musk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe ship part is, by far, the hardest because that\u2019s going to come in from super-orbital velocities, like interplanetary Mars transfer velocities, moon transfer velocities,\u201d Musk said last month. \u201cThese are way harder than coming from Earth orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spaceship\u2019s high-speed returns will stress the craft\u2019s heat shield and structure beyond the temperatures and pressures experienced by a capsule re-entering the atmosphere from Earth orbit, or by a descending rocket stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cTesting that ship out is the real tricky part,\u201d Musk said Feb. 6. \u201cThe booster, I think \u2014 I don\u2019t want to get too complacent \u2014 but I think we understand reusable boosters. Reusable spaceships that can land propulsively, that\u2019s harder. We\u2019re starting with the hard part first.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spaceship design Musk revealed in September had a cluster of six Raptor engines \u2014 he later said the ship could have seven engines \u2014 and methane and liquid oxygen tanks containing almost a quarter-million pounds (1,100 metric tons) of cryogenic propellants for deep space burns and landing maneuvers. The spacecraft would stretch 157 feet (48 meters) long and have an internal pressurized volume exceeding that of an Airbus A380 jumbo jet, enough room for 40 passenger cabins.<\/p>\n

Musk revealed a tool that will be used to build the BFR\u2019s interplanetary spaceship in an Instagram post April 8.<\/p>\n

SpaceX will pay the Port of Los Angeles $1.38 million per year under its lease agreement for the Berth 240 location.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist\u2019s concept of SpaceX\u2019s planned spaceship on the moon. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX plans to build its massive BFR rocket boosters and spaceships inside a cavernous new factory at the Port of Los Angeles, officials announced this week. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti confirmed Monday during a State of the City address that SpaceX will produce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2873,1931,291,1545,25,2256,597,1563],"class_list":["post-13847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-bfr","tag-california","tag-commercial-space","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-launch","tag-port-of-los-angeles","tag-raptor","tag-solar-system"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}