Maryland warehouse opens to build space rocket parts | Space

Space is open for business, and Maryland is now positioned as a player in the space economy.

Rocket Lab, a direct competitor of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, is establishing a footprint in Maryland, moving forward with a facility in Middle River, Baltimore County, at a location that also honors the past.

A new aerospace facility is taking shape at an enormous warehouse that has been home to aerospace manufacturing since 1929. A ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday was low-tech for a facility that’s about as futuristic as they come.

Rocket Lab just inked a deal to turn the former Lockheed Martin vertical launch building on Eastern Boulevard into a space structures complex, a manufacturing hub for rocket, satellite and spacecraft components.” Rocket Lab, we’re really happy that you decided to come here and be a part of our history,” said U.S. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-District 2. “These projects will help our national security and the economy.

“The 113,000-square-foot warehouse will not roll out completed rockets, but it will build enormous components of rockets.”Within these walls, our team will develop and build advanced spacecraft buses, structural panels and assemblies, satellite dispensers, aerostructures and heat shields, composite overwrap pressure vessels and solar panel substrates and more,” said Adam Spice, Rocket Lab’s chief financial officer.

At Friday’s announcement, officials from all levels of government and both parties called this a big deal for Baltimore County, Maryland and the nation.”It’s jobs, it’s economic growth, it shows confidence in our future.

But what it really means is that we are going to have what it takes to be competitive… to be able to have a reliable supply chain, to be able to keep the leadership in regards to space technology,” said U.S. Sen Ben Cardin, D-Maryland.”This is so exciting to continue the long history of aeronautics right here in Middle River,” said Baltimore County Delegate Kathy Szeliga,…

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