+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Science (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-61.html)
+--- Forum: Astrophysics, Cosmology & Astronomy (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-74.html)
+--- Thread: SpaceX Inks Deal to Acquire New Spaceship Manufacturing Site (for BFRs?) (/thread-5041.html)
SpaceX Inks Deal to Acquire New Spaceship Manufacturing Site (for BFRs?) - Yazata - Mar 20, 2018
It's at the Port of Los Angeles, with access to the ocean so that (really) large spaceship components can be hauled off by sea to Cape Canaveral.
This new site will host "composite curing, cleaning, painting, and assembly [of commercial transportation vessels]" that "would need to be transported by water due to their size." This description meshes almost perfectly with past discussion of BFR manufacturing plans from SpaceX executives like Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell, both of which have in the recent past affirmed the need for any BFR manufacturing facility to be located adjacent to a large body of water due to the difficulty of transporting rocket hardware as large as BFR.
https://www.teslarati.com/spacexs-first-bfr-manufacturing-facility-approved-long-beach-port-la-photos/
RE: SpaceX Inks Deal to Acquire New Spaceship Manufacturing Site (for BFRs?) - C C - Mar 20, 2018
A lot if not most of early-day science fiction seemed to revolve around genius entrepreneurs or pioneering moguls being the first deliverers of space travel, rather than governments. Perhaps never fully appreciated till now how much Elon and other private commercial adventurers actually do reflect or finally concretely realize that retro-future trope.
Belonging to the latter part of that era and of course resonating with today's BFR -- it also brings to mind Ayn Rand's erotic fascination with such "supermen" in her literature and screenplays. Arrayed with phallic symbols like skyscraper rendezvous, "the big honkin' quarry drill", etc. (That titillating adoration of the "capitalistic Übermensch" oft ridiculed after the dawn of academic feminism.)
~