A rocket is tested at SpaceX’s McGregor plant in this file photo.
McGregor will soon get a second SpaceX plant, this one geared to make 800 to 1,000 rocket engines per year to help the company reach its interplanetary ambitions, CEO Elon Musk announced Saturday.
The new rocket plant will “focus on volume production of Raptor 2” rocket engines, while a factory in California will focus on Raptor Vacuum and “new experimental designs,” Musk said in a series of tweets Saturday.
“By ‘volume production,’ I mean 2 to 4 engines per day,” Musk tweeted. “That’s super high volume for big rocket engines, but low volume by automotive standards. … That’s about what’s needed over ten years to create the fleet to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.”
He said the Martian city could be built by about 2050, assuming it takes about 20 years to build.
SpaceX in 2003 established a rocket-testing facility in McGregor, a town of about 5,300 about 15 miles west of central Waco. The plant has grown steadily since then, with 500 employees as of 2018.
SpaceX leases 4,280 acres in the city of McGregor’s industrial district, much of which was a former military industrial complex dating back to World War II.
The Waco-McLennan County Economic Development Corp. a year ago approved a $1 million incentive to help SpaceX with a $10 million infrastructure improvement project at the existing plant.
