Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, will invest $600 million to expand its Rocket Park campus in Cape Canaveral, Florida, according to a statement from Governor Ron DeSantis.
The planned 830,000-square-foot manufacturing facility will increase the volume and mass that can be delivered into orbit. The governor’s office said the project will leverage Florida’s Spaceport Improvement Program, a state infrastructure funding initiative for aerospace development.
The increased investment on Florida’s “Space Coast” will create 500 aerospace jobs with an average salary of $98,000.
“Project Horizon is the latest and most ambitious chapter in Blue Origin’s decade-long commitment to Florida,” Blue Origin’s chief executive, Dave Limp, said in a statement. The Seattle-based company has 4,000 employees across 11 sites on Florida’s Space Coast, east of Orlando.
In a recent interview on CNBC, Bezos spoke about the company’s plans to put data centers in space.
Bezos said for orbital data centers to be realistic, “launch cost has to come down very significantly by a factor of 10. That’s what we’re working on right here. That’s what Blue Origin is doing.”
Rubio’s remarks signal the war in Iran is high on the agenda for talks between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping over the next two days. China is the Islamic Republic’s largest oil buyer and a key diplomatic partner, supplying Tehran with goods from consumer products to electronics.
The US sees that relationship as an opportunity to enlist Beijing’s help in reaching a deal with Iran to end the war, which has been locked in stalemate since a ceasefire was agreed just over a month ago.
Oil prices held steady on Thursday, with Brent crude trading at about $106 a barrel after falling 2% in the previous session. They’ve risen by nearly 50% since the war began, and the International Monetary Fund has warned of a broad slowdown in global growth.
The US-Iran ceasefire that’s been in place since April 8 has broadly held, though Trump described it this week as being on “massive life support.”
US Vice President JD Vance, who led a round of direct talks with Iran in Pakistan in April, said there’s been “progress” in negotiations with Tehran.
“The president has set us off on the diplomatic pathway for now and that’s what I’m focused on,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
Tehran continues to resist US demands to reopen Hormuz and says it will only do that if Washington ends a naval blockade on Iranian ports. It’s also insisting that the US unfreezes billions of dollars of Iranian assets and lifts sanctions.
Despite weeks of heavy US-Israeli bombardment, Iran’s military still has plenty of firepower. New US intelligence assessments show Iran has operational access to 30 of its 33 missile sites along the Hormuz strait and has retained roughly 70% of its prewar missile stockpile, according to a New York Times report, citing classified information.
