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LA Times: The Space Economy is Adding Jobs in SoCal
Southern California’s space economy is being revitalized with a new wave of startups pushing technological boundaries, including many here in El Segundo.
Read the Los Angeles Times article here.
Preview:
The space race is transforming Southern California’s economy — again
- Southern California’s space economy is being revitalized with a new wave of startups pushing technological boundaries.
- A report by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. shows the county’s aerospace and defense industries added 11,000 jobs between 2022 and 2024. The jobs had an average wage of $141,110 — more than twice the county average.
In a giant Long Beach warehouse near where Boeing used to build the C-17 cargo jet, Vast is fabricating what could be the first commercial space station to circle Earth.
Just up the road in El Segundo, Varda Space Industries has grown molecular crystals in microgravity with few impurities for pharmaceuticals that one day could be injected in cancer patients.
And a little south in Seal Beach, a scrappy company called AstroForge aims to land a satellite on an asteroid just a football field wide and mine possibly billions in platinum riches.
The companies aren’t anomalies but rather three examples of Southern California’s growing space economy, which shrank after the Cold War but is being revitalized with a new wave of startups pushing technological boundaries.
Read the Los Angeles Times article here.