SpaceX spinoffs launch El Segundo into economic orbit

El Segundo’s Chris Pimentel may be California’s happiest mayor.As his counterparts in Los Angeles, San Jose and San Francisco struggle with budgetary nightmares, Pimentel has at his disposal rising revenues, a booming job market and an energetic business community. The reason: His small town of 17,000 south of LAX is the birthplace of SpaceX, and has emerged as the aerospace startup mecca in Southern California. “We try to reduce friction,” Pimentel, who served with the Marines in Iraq, suggests.

“It’s a whole city effort; this is a city that likes business.”Space and defense have deep roots in El Segundo.Elon Musk started SpaceX here in 2002 at 1310 East Grand Ave, before it moved onto grander things.

As of Friday, SpaceX is among the richest companies on the planet. Sadly, the company is no longer headquartered  in Southern California, as I can attest having seen their ultra-modern headquarters in Bastrop, 30 miles from the Austin, Texas, airport. Thank our idiot state government for booting out what may become the world’s most important company. California’s elected officials, and its insane policies, deeply alienated Musk, the world’s predominant space pioneer.Before that, they had already succeeded in losing the headquarters of virtually all the top traditional aerospace firms.Yet fortunately for California, and especially El Segundo, many Space X subcontractors remain, while others have spun off from the mothership.

These smaller firms, despite the best efforts of Sacramento and City Hall, have helped the Golden State to retain its aerospace dominance. California has a 19% share of the global space industry, 40% of the US industry, and remains home to four of the government’s largest space-related programs. The key lies here lies with our still-powerful talent base.Southern California boasts almost twice as many aerospace engineers as second-place Texas.

The allure of this talent has led one of Space X’s strongest competitor...