Mayor says SpaceX to build new rocket in Port of Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (AP) — SpaceX has chosen to manufacture its planned big, new rocket in the Port of Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Monday in his annual state-of-the city speech. “This is a vehicle that holds the promise of taking humanity deeper into the cosmos than ever before," Garcetti said in the speech. On Thursday, the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners will consider leasing an 18-acre site on Terminal Island to the Hawthorne-based company for a plant to build rockets so massive they must be moved by water, according to a meeting agenda. SpaceX would pay the port an initial, annual rent of $1.38 million to use the historic, former Southwest Marine Shipyard, and the 10-year lease has up to two 10-year extensions. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said the BFR — which stands for Big Falcon Rocket — will be used for missions to Mars and to fly people around the Earth in record-time. SpaceX plans a rocket and spaceship facility at the Port of Los Angeles that will help advance founder Elon Musk’s goal of making missions to Mars by 2022. The company’s website says BFR could be used for cargo trips and the eventual colonization of life on Mars, as well for high-speed travel on Earth. SpaceX, based in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, already uses the Port of Los Angeles for missions that recover Falcon 9 first-stage boosters on a floating platform in the Pacific and when it recovers supply capsules that parachute into the ocean after missions to the international space station. Los Angeles Councilman Joe Buscaino, who represents the Harbor Area, said Musk is “the modern day Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford and Leonardo DaVinci all in one.”

“The fact that he has made so much progress in such a short amount of time with not only SpaceX but Tesla, Solar City and now the Boring Company, gives us lots of promise for the future of the LA Waterfront as an innovation district in Los Angeles,” Buscaino said in a statement. “As announced today by Mayor Garcetti, the Port will play an increasingly important role in our mission to help make humanity multi-planetary as SpaceX begins production development of BFR — our next generation rocket and spaceship system capable of carrying crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond.” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president and COO, said in a statement. “The rockets, once complete, would be too large for responsible transport by road and thus must be transported by barge or ship,” according to the resolution that will go before the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners. "I want to find people, or whatever they call themselves, in another solar system."
In Los Angeles, SpaceX announced that they will build a massive rocket named BFR capable of sending humans to Mars.