SpaceX is gearing up in its effort to build a rocket that could carry mankind to Mars and beyond. This week, the company posted its first job posting dedicated to the project.
As part of its grand vision, SpaceX is designing the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR, as a launch vehicle capable of carrying people to Mars. CEO Elon Musk envisions that the technology will eventually replace the Falcon 9 and even shuttle passengers between New York and Los Angeles in about 25 minutes.
To achieve this, SpaceX is hiring a “build engineer” with experience in aerospace and mechanical engineering who can “work long hours and weekends” whenever needed. “Working directly in the Vehicle Engineering group, the goal of this team is to investigate, test, and develop new hardware, software, and automation efforts capable of supporting advanced metallic and composite joining methods for the BFR,” said the job description, which listed no salary range or application deadline.
Announced in early 2017, the BFR is intended to be a reuseable, 340-foot tall spaceship. In April, the city of Los Angeles said that production of the rocket would be in the Port of Los Angeles. The engineering job is located in Hawthorne, Calif., a city near Los Angeles that is also home to a Tesla design facility.
Musk, who is also Tesla’s CEO, has long relished the idea of humans exploring space through SpaceX, sometimes musing on social media what it might entail. A week ago, Musk tweeted that the BFR could include the kind of running track that was imagined in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey 50 years ago.
Running track in @SpaceX BF Spaceship will look something like this pic.twitter.com/563upTfV58
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 8, 2018