SpaceX indicates it will manufacture the BFR rocket in Los Angeles

Enlarge / SpaceX is likely to build the BFR rocket, and the BFS spaceship shown here on the Moon, near its California headquarters. (credit: SpaceX)

Anyone who has visited SpaceX's rocket factory in Hawthorne, California, knows that the company has filled up its facilities with Falcon 9 first stages, payload fairings, and Dragon capsules. In the coming years, as the company transitions into manufacturing the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR vehicle, it will need a lot more capacity.

The company has not explicitly stated where it will build the BFR, expected to measure 106 meters tall and nine meters wide. However, it needs to do so near water, because such a large vehicle cannot be transported to the launch pad or test sites via a highway, the means currently used to move the Falcon 9 rocket.

A new document from the Port of Los Angeles indicates that the company is moving ahead with plans to build a "state-of-the-art" industrial manufacturing facility near Long Beach, about 20 miles south of its headquarters. The document summarizes an environmental study of the site for the port, on behalf of a proposed tenant-WW Marine Composites, LLC. This appears to be a subsidiary company of SpaceX.

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