"One of the unique things about our Florida operations is that we aren't just launching here, we're building here," Bezos said in prepared remarks. "At Exploration Park, we'll have a 21st century production facility where we'll focus on manufacturing our reusable fleet of orbital launchers and readying them for flight again and again. Locating vehicle assembly near our launch site eases the challenge of processing and transporting really big rockets."

Blue Origins said earlier this year that it planned to begin testing the BE-4 engine in 2016, so today's announcement is a sign that it may actually be on schedule.



