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  Firefly says it will build a large new rocket manufacturing facility in Exploration Park, Florida. [credit: Firefly ]

On Friday, Texas-based rocket company Firefly announced that it has reached an agreement to develop manufacturing facilities and a launch site at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport in Florida. The new facility will support the production of up to 24 Alpha rockets a year, with the ability to scale from there, company officials said.

These are sizable plans. Over an unspecified period of time, the company said it will invest $52 million into the facilities. Florida’s spaceport development authority, Space Florida, will also provide an additional $18.9 million in infrastructure investments.

The company will build its launch facilities at Space Launch Complex 20, where Space Florida hopes to develop a multiuser facility for small-satellite launch companies like Firefly. It will also build an expansive facility to assemble its Alpha (and eventually the larger Beta) rockets, near the large Blue Origin plant in Florida's Exploration Park area.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches on Thursday night from Florida. (credit: SpaceX)

A mild winter breeze blew along the Florida coast when the final Apollo mission roared into the sky shortly after midnight on December 7, 1972. More than half a million people turned out to watch Apollo 17 lift off despite the late hour. Imagine you were lucky enough to be among them.

After the rocket disappears and nighttime closes in, you're musing about when humans might return to deep space, when an aging drifter in a Steppenwolf t-shirt interrupts your reverie.

Won't see that again in our lifetimes.

Huh?

A rocket sending a lander to the Moon. Ain't gonna happen again for nearly 50 years.

That's impossible. NASA is talking about going to Mars in a decade or so.

Well, the next rocket from here that's sending a lander to the Moon won't launch until 2019. 

I can't believe that. And how can you know that—

And that rocket will already have flown twice.

What? Our rockets fall into the ocean.

Yeah, well, there will be a boat to catch this one.

I think I've got to be going.

Oh, and the rocket will be built by a dude from South Africa, and the lander will carry an Israeli flag.

You'd probably better call a cab to get home, old-timer.

In December, 1972, Elon Musk was one year old, living in South Africa. Israel was just three months removed from the Munich massacre, in which 11 members of its Olympic team were taken hostage, and killed, during the summer games. And yet, nearly five decades later Musk's company, SpaceX, would link up with a private Israeli effort to launch a small lander to the Moon's surface.