Here's what a Texas firm’s plans for a $52M small-rocket plant mean for metro Orlando

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Orlando Business Journal By Matthew Richardson 2/27/2019

A business complex on Florida’s Space Coast is set to get its third manufacturing facility — and there’s plenty of remaining land to welcome more.

Cedar Park, Texas-based small-rocket maker Firefly Aerospace Inc. plans to build a 180,000-square-foot, $52 million assembly plant in Exploration Park — property managed by aerospace economic development agency Space Florida.

Firefly Aerospace joins two other space firms with facilities in the Cape Canaveral-area complex: Billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin LLC has a big presence with its $205 million, 750,000-square-foot rocket-making plant; and Arlington, Va.-based small-satellite maker OneWeb LLC has an $85 million, 100,000-square-foot assembly plant. The three firms will have a combined 870 Exploration Park workers in the next five years.

The newest addition, Firefly Aerospace, expects to open its small-rocket assembly plant in 2021, which will create 239 jobs paying an average annual salary of $70,000. The firm will have the capacity to build 24 of its Alpha rockets each year at the plant. It also will use Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 20 to launch its rockets.

“We’ve been talking to Florida for more than a year now,” Firefly CFO Mark Watt told Orlando Business Journal. “While there are other locations you can launch from on the East Coast — for example, Wallops Island in Virginia — Cape Canaveral is unique because it gives us the capability to build and launch in a single location.”

Once it’s up and running, Firefly Aerospace expects to launch its 95-foot-tall Alpha rocket — which it hasn’t yet launched — at least twice a week for its small-satellite customers. That additional activity will give the Space Coast a bigger share of the $330 billion global space industry.

Meanwhile, the 299-acre Exploration Park’s existing structures take up roughly 26 acres, based on the square footage of the three companies plus a fourth tenant, Space Life Sciences Lab — not including parking spaces. So, Space Florida is working to lure more aerospace firms to the park, Dale Ketcham, Space Florida vice president of government and external relations, told OBJ.

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