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Updated 18:40 Eastern with comments from Elon Musk.
WASHINGTON – Less than a week after the 10% dismissal of its employees, SpaceX announced on Jan. 16 its intention to move the production of at least prototypes to its next-generation Los Angeles launcher system in Texas.
In a statement, SpaceX said it plans to build its Starship vehicle, the top floor of its next-generation reusable launch system, at its South Texas site, originally designed to serve as a site launch. A prototype of this vehicle has been developed in recent weeks on the site, in anticipation of tests "at the hopper" that could begin in one to two months.
"To streamline operations, SpaceX is developing and testing the Starship test vehicle at our site in South Texas," company spokeswoman Eva Behrend said in a statement. The news was reported for the first time by the Los Angeles Times after a pair of tweets at the beginning of the January 16 day of Joe Buscaino, a member of the Los Angeles City Council, whose district includes the Port of Los Angeles.
"Although I am crushed by the fact that #SpaceX has removed the #SuperHeavy from @PortofLA, I am confident that other innovators will see the enormous value they get in San Pedro," he said. he writes. Super Heavy is the name that SpaceX recently gave to the lower part of the launch system that previously bore the official name of Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR. The upper floor has been renamed Starship.
While I feel crushed about #SpaceX pulling the #Very heavy out of @ PortofLAI am convinced that other innovators will see the enormous value they are getting in San Pedro. (1/2)
– Joe Buscaino (@JoeBuscaino) January 16, 2019
In May, the board unanimously approved an agreement between the port and SpaceX regarding the rental of a vacant property in the harbor where SpaceX was planning to build a plant for what was still called at the time the BFR. SpaceX sought to build the vehicle in the harbor, rather than its existing plant in nearby Hawthorne, California, because the large diameter of the vehicle – nine meters – required that it be transported by boat rather than by truck.
"This is a game changer for our city," Buscaino said at a May 8 council meeting, during which the agreement was briefly discussed. "We will start building spaceships on this terminal."
SpaceX has agreed to pay rent of $ 1.38 million for the first year, bringing the 20-year agreement to $ 40 million. The company had originally planned to build an 80,000-square-foot plant in this plant, with subsequent installations of 200,000 square feet. SpaceX should eventually employ 700 people.
"He will perform the production and development of the largest rocket ship ever known, the Big Falcon Rocket," he told the audience. "Dear colleagues, with your approval, for our city, it will be a Big Deal Falcon." The council approved the lease agreement without further debate.
In its statement, SpaceX did not explain why it was shifting the production of the system to southern Texas, but said it did not affect existing operations. "This decision does not affect our current manufacturing, design and launch operations at Hawthorne and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California," said Behrend. "In addition, SpaceX will continue the recovery operations of our reusable Falcon rockets and Dragon spacecraft at the Port of Los Angeles."
SpaceX currently uses the cruise ship port which serves as landing platforms for the Falcon 9 's first floors, as well as for ships recovering Dragon spaceships plunging into the Pacific Ocean. In recent days, the port has seen the arrival of a drone carrying the first floor of the Falcon 9 after the launch of the 10 Iridium Next satellites on January 11, as well as a ship that has recovered a vessel Space Dragon who left the International Space Station and splashed on January 13 off the coast of Baja California.
In the tweets on Jan. 16, Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, said the development of the vehicle itself, including the Raptor engines that propelled it, would continue in Hawthorne, while the less prototypes of the spacecraft would be integrated. Texas. "We are building the Starship prototypes locally at our Texas launch site because their size makes them very difficult to transport," he says. he said.
A move to South Texas, according to industry sources, could be a way to cut spending, given the lower cost of living in this region compared to the Los Angeles area. However, this area of Texas has a much smaller workforce, especially in the aerospace, compared to southern California.
The announcement comes less than a week after the announcement on January 11 that SpaceX was laying off approximately 10 percent of its workforce in order to focus its resources on its next generation launch system as well as on Starlink , its broadband constellation.
At the time, SpaceX did not go into detail about the extent of the layoffs; beyond estimates of company sources, about 10% of SpaceX's 6,000 employees lost their jobs. However, in a lawsuit filed on January 11 with the California Department of Employment Development and provided to SpaceNews as a result of a public registration application, the company disclosed that it was not in the public domain. it laid off 577 people in its own Hawthorne facility, a figure reported for the first time by Bloomberg.
The filing, required by the Federal Act on Workers' Rehabilitation and Retraining (WARN), indicated that all employees would receive a salary and benefits until the official date of their dismissal on March 12. The seven-page document lists the deleted positions, including: a wide range of engineers, technicians, machinists and managers.
This figure does not include layoffs at other SpaceX facilities, including Texas and Florida, the other two states where the company is very active. No warning notifications from SpaceX regarding layoffs have been issued by the Florida Economic Opportunities Department or the Texas Workforce Commission.
Musk has not yet publicly commented on the layoffs, but he recently showed footage of the Starship test article being built in Texas, including Jan. 10 where he said the vehicle had been badembled.
The Starship flight test rocket has just completed the badembly at the @SpaceX Texas launch site. This is a real picture, not a rendering. pic.twitter.com/k1HkueoXaz
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 11, 2019
This vehicle will soon perform its first short hop flight, he said on the 5th of January. "Aim for 4 weeks, which probably means 8 weeks, due to unforeseen problems."
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