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SpaceX to Begin BFR Production at the Port of Los Angeles
The Mayor of Los Angeles has announced [engadget.com] that SpaceX will begin production of the BFR [wikipedia.org] at the port of Los Angeles:
SpaceX can start building its "Big Fucking Rocket [engadget.com]," now that it has officially found a home in LA. Mayor Eric Garcetti has announced on Twitter [twitter.com] that the private space giant "will start production development of the Big Falcon Rocket (the spacecraft's tamer name, apparently)" at the port of Los Angeles. SpaceX designed the 348-foot-long behemoth to fly humanity to the moon, Mars and beyond. It will be able to carry up to [150] tons in payload, whereas Falcon Heavy can only carry [63.8] tons. "This vehicle holds the promise of taking humanity deeper into the cosmos than ever before," he added, along with an illustration of the company's massive interplanetary spacecraft.
The massive cylindrical body of the BFR's fabrication mold has been photographed [teslarati.com] at a tent at the Port of San Pedro (compare to this earlier photo [cnbc.com] of the main body tool):
Finally, it's worth noting just how shockingly busy the BFR tent was on both April 13th and 14th, as well as the 8th (the first day Pauline visited the facility [teslarati.com]). With upwards of 40 cars parked at the tent, it's blindingly clear that SpaceX is not simply using the tent as a temporary storage location – alongside the arrival of composite fabrication materials (prepreg sheets, epoxy, etc) from Airtech International, SpaceX undeniably intends to begin initial fabrication of the first BFR prototypes in this tent, although they will likely eventually move the activities to the Berth 240 Mars rocket factory [teslarati.com]. That's certainly not a sentence I ever expected to write, but it is what it is.
The BFR's height may be elongated [twitter.com] from its planned total of 106 meters.
Related: SpaceX to Launch Five Times in April, Test BFR by 2019 [soylentnews.org]
SpaceX BFR vs. ULA Vulcan Showdown in the 2020s [soylentnews.org]
SpaceX Valued at $25 Billion... and More [soylentnews.org]
