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Space United States Businesses Technology

SpaceX To Shift Starship Work From California To Texas 183

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.
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SpaceX To Shift Starship Work From California To Texas

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @02:04AM (#58000342)
    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...
    • by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @02:52AM (#58000424)

      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.

    • I bet he knows a 9.9 quake + tsunami will hit LA.

      I wouldnt dare to have operations there, and have it all wiped out , including your work force being dead.

      Good luck LA.

    • Sure, you can get a cheap house.... but you're in Texas.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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

  • by bblb ( 5508872 )
    That's what happens when liberals raise taxes, attack businesses, and generally fuck everything up... between anti business policy and sky high cost of living forcing wages to be artificially high, there's just no economic or business sense in staying in California, and it'll only worsen with Newsome.
    • by larkost ( 79011 )

      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 b

      • by bblb ( 5508872 )
        Has nothing to do with things being naturally more expensive... we accept that in California. The issue at hand is that things are ARTIFICIALLY more expensive because of unnecessary regulatory costs and exorbitant taxation, taxation which invariably fails to be used for the claimed problem that taxation was meant to address. Case in point, the gas tax which was meant to be used for roads is already being targeted by Newsome as a source of revenue to promote his healthcare for illegals program. It's always
  • a company can have its own employee cafeteria too.
    Really great housing.
    Less of that big state gov feel.
    • Texas and Florida have always traditionally been launch states. Because if they explode, well hey, maybe nobody will even notice.
      • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @07:19AM (#58001034)

        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.

      • by theM_xl ( 760570 )

        No, they're launch sites because they're the closest (easily accessible) part of the US to the equator so the rockets get a decent boost from Earth's rotation speed. It's hardly rocket science... well, except it is. ;-)

        • by lgw ( 121541 )

          Plus it's really handy to have the ocean to your immediate east when you launch. Otherwise, like Russia, your mistakes rain fire form the sky onto whoever happens to live downrange.

  • What is going on, is that assembly takes place in texas where a launchpad is at. This makes it trivial to move any rockets to another site.
  • There'll soon be a wall over Texas to keep out the aliens.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    you would laugh at people living in California.

    In terms of total career work related hours vs leisure time and retirement age the quality of living Texas is objectively better for straight people and Florida is objectively better for gay people.

    If you're a productive person you should leave California, they will bleed you dry so that people who can't even support themselves can be lauded as heros for having 8 kids.

  • by Nova Express ( 100383 ) <lawrenceperson AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @08:05AM (#58001170) Homepage Journal

    Company after company has moved away from high-tax, high-cost California to low-tax, low-cost Texas [battleswarmblog.com].

    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.

    • California's big government system is so pension-debt riddled that Californians pay more and get less,

      California carries a typical debt load (remember, it's the nation's economic powerhouse, so it can safely carry more debt than any other state) and offers its citizens more than other states, which costs more. In spite of that we have laws which protect residents from sudden rises in property taxes. You don't seem to know what you're talking about. To the extent that we don't have things that other states do, it's because California is one of the states which gets back the least from the feds when it pays t

    • Got to agree with this... everybody move to Texas and we'll rough it out here in CA alone.

      Markets have spoken and found that should be more expensive in CA. I've been to Texas, all over Taxas, and you definitely get what you pay for.
  • Having destroyed California they need new land to raid.

  • Sounds like corporations playing corporation games.

The 11 is for people with the pride of a 10 and the pocketbook of an 8. -- R.B. Greenberg [referring to PDPs?]

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