Elon Musk announced that SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) are moving from California to Texas because of Assembly Bill 1955, which bans school from notifying parents of their children’s gender identity, as well as because of several other laws and regulations, starting with the coronavirus lockdowns led by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In May 2020 Musk, who also owns Tesla, announced that it would be moving to Texas and Nevada, because of the lockdowns in Alameda County and California. Officials ignored and dismissed the risk of SpaceX also leaving despite Musk’s primary interest is manned spaceflight, which is concentrated in Texas and Florida.
In February 2020, just before the lockdowns, the Los Angeles Harbor Commission rushed to approve a SpaceX facility at the Port of Los Angeles. This would have supported development of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which is too large to transport by road, and is the successor to Falcon 9 made in Hawthorne. This future work was cancelled and downgraded to rocket recovery in Long Beach.
In March 2022, SpaceX announced it was ending production of its crewed Dragon capsule to focus on Starship at its launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. In August 2022, SpaceX filed permits for a 520,000 square foot facility outside of Austin. This is similar in size to SpaceX’s current headquarters and it is actually more convenient for its operations, as well as Musk. For now this site is positioned to build Starlink satellites, but could replace Hawthorne in any capacity in the future.
Other warnings that continue to be ignored include that launches at Vandenberg on the Central Coast have declined, except for self-induced demand by SpaceX. Vandenberg is preferred for polar launches, but in August 2020 SpaceX demonstrated the first polar launch in decades from Florida. In other words, jobs in Long Beach and Vandenberg are dependent on SpaceX.
Meanwhile other space companies like Aerojet Rocketdyne atrophied, which was acquired by L3Harris. Boeing has contracted to El Segundo and is now focused on satellites. Northrop cut jobs in Redondo. Rocket Lab in Long Beach is moving upmarket and closer to its launch site in Virginia. United Launch Alliance’s competitor rocket to SpaceX is made in Alabama. Los Angeles wasn’t even on the list for Space Force Headquarters, which was led by Colorado’s “Aerospace Alley” and up and coming New Mexico.
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A generation ago Southern California produced the Space Shuttle and the Apollo missions before that. Besides SpaceX, this work is now in Colorado, Texas, Virginia, Alabama, and Florida. California’s last competitive advantages are liquid rocket engines, software development, and semiconductors, but it is losing ground to the above, as well as Arizona and Ohio. This isn’t about red states versus blue states, which is empty hate, but denial and dereliction of duty.
Federal, state, and local politicians, dominated by the Bay Area cabal that ignore Southern California and everyone outside the politburo, because in a single-party state advancement is through the party, not the people. They lie that anything is wrong, quibble to cover their failures, and when they’re done attacking “fellow” Californians, they go across state lines to find someone to blame.
SpaceX epitomizes the inherent problem with California especially under Gov. Newsom – only the rich, powerful, and favored sometimes have rights. And if one of the richest men on Earth whose ambition is to colonize Mars is now politically persona non grata and won’t or can’t make it, what chance do normal Californians have?
Matt Quan is a U.S. Air Force veteran and was previously assigned to the Secretary of the Air Force, International Affairs at the Pentagon.