[guywithahat]

It does seem a bit weird to me that SpaceX was never based out of Houston and has such a small presence. They have the NASA base there and scores of private space companies, and the lack of zoning means the housing problem is permanently fixed (at least until someone zones the city). Moving Starlink production to Austin just feels like moving to a worse but slightly cheaper San Francisco.

[s1artibartfast]

Makes sense that SpaceX was in LA because it is one of the historic rocket design hubs, if not the rocket design capital of the world.

[guywithahat]

Well Houston has a massive space industry too (hence why they call it "space city"). My thought has always been that he's been becoming more frustrated with CA for many years, but he just moved from SF to LA, and now he's moving From LA to Austin and Starbase, when (in my mind) it would make more sense to build and design the starlink satellites (among other things) in Houston where the space industry is much stronger.

You do bring up a good point about JPL being in LA, which would certainly have been why he originally started SpaceX there. That used to be the only focus of the company. I was thinking more about starlink just because that's what the article focuses on (among a few other things)

[s1artibartfast]

Aerojet rocketdyne is another major player. I used to go watch their engine tests as a child.

I agree satellite work is more distributed.

[avmich]

> the rocket design capital of the world

Pretty hard to compete with Moscow, don't you think?

[s1artibartfast]

Maybe it was competition in the 1980's with the soviets trailing, but with the fall of the USSR in 91' the competition was over. Through the 90's and 2000's NASA and the DoD kept pushing new exploratory technology and increasingly advanced and technical engine designs.

SpaceX was notorious for eschewing experienced rocket scientists and grinding out work from novice engineers, but I think it is fair to say they still benefited from the pool of experience they did tap into.

[avmich]

I'm afraid you underestimate Moscow space cluster. In '90s, even in '00s their rocket engines - not quite from Moscow, a few kilometers away, from Khimki - remained world class. Realized project from, among others, Korolyov, less than an hour of drive from Moscow - Sea Launch, not realized but seriously pushed - Kliper. In 80's they might be unquestioned champions, not trailing - but I don't know your criteria, it's just what I see. Moscow had Proton-making factory, two significant space-relevant universities - MAI and MGTU, and several strong technical universities also related to space industry - MGU, MFTI, MEI... And there are others. So, in terms of being "the rocket design capital of the world", if you consider "rocket" to mean "space projects", Moscow with immediate neighboring region - not Soviets - was until recently (2008?.. later?..) pretty competitive. What LA region has of similar effects?

[vel0city]

Houston has mission control, lots of astronaut training, and a lot of administration in Houston. But Pasadena CA has the Jet Propulsion Lab, which is a big part of the design of the rockets and robots and what not.

[tomjakubowski]

The Los Angeles area in general has lots of aerospace engineering: besides JPL, Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing each have a big presence, not to mention the plethora of smaller defense contractors.

[s1artibartfast]

Aerojet rocketdyne is a big part of the story too

[dragonwriter]

SoCal also has Edwards AFB ("the Center of the Aerospace Flight Testing Universe"), Vandenberg Space Force Base, etc.

[scruple]

I lived in Lompoc, CA for a while (next to Vandenberg -- which is a really cool experience, the rocket launches were absolutely amazing). I had always assumed that the El Segundo presence was in big part due to access to Vandenberg for launches.