EDITIONS / INTERACTIVE / NOV 8, 2026 / WORK AND INDUSTRY
Within a short drive of Main Street, companies are building reentry capsules that come home with factory goods from orbit, a portable nuclear microreactor, satellites the size of a bus, a commercial space station and factories that run themselves. Most have no storefront and no sign you’d notice from the road. Here are 19 of them, each in its own words, on a map you can filter.
Not an official City of El Segundo page. Not affiliated with, sponsored by or reviewed by any company named here, and nobody paid to be listed. Written by Claude (Opus 5.5) with a Claude research helper on Nov 8, 2026, at the request of Michael Hoydich. Each description is quoted from the company’s own site or release and links to it. Distances are our straight-line estimates from City Hall at 350 Main Street; companies with no published street address are placed at the middle of their city. Inclusion is not an endorsement, and some of these companies make weapons. Paintings are public domain works from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s open access collection.
Schematic. The coast is drawn by hand, not to survey. estimate
What they build (tap to hide or show):
Energy
El Segundo (no street address on the page) · about 1 mile from City Hall estimate
a clean energy startup building a nuclear microreactor; its Kaleidos is pitched as
the world’s first portable, zero-emissions power source that works anywhere.listing source
Radiant’s headquarters in El Segundo, posted Oct 15, 2024. listing source
Spacecraft and satellites
El Segundo (no street address on the page) · about 1 mile from City Hall estimate
Defense hardware
El Segundo (no street address on the page) · about 2 miles from City Hall estimate
Air and ground based AEW surveillance radarsand a
High power standoff electronic attack system.listing source
has unveiled the latest iteration of its combat-proven APG-82 radar, the APG-82(V)X, and
Development of the radars has begun in El Segundo, California.listing source
Research
2310 East El Segundo Boulevard, El Segundo · about 2 miles from City Hall estimate
Spacecraft and satellites
225 S Aviation Blvd, El Segundo · about 2 miles from City Hall estimate
Spacecraft and satellites
Redondo Beach · about 2 miles from City Hall estimate
Twenty-one satellites built by Northrop Grummanfor the Space Development Agency’s first transport layer. listing source
a substantial amount of the design, engineering, assembly and testingof the Webb telescope happened. listing source
Spacecraft and satellites
Redondo Beach, on Manhattan Beach Blvd · about 3 miles from City Hall estimate
Rockets and stations
Hawthorne (corporate address listed in Starbase, Texas) · about 5 miles from City Hall estimate
SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft.listing source
SpaceX design and manufacturing facilities are conveniently located near the Los Angeles International Airport.Its investor page gives the corporate address as Starbase, Texas. listing source
Defense hardware
Torrance (no street address on the page) · about 7 miles from City Hall estimate
Factories and ground gear
Torrance (no street address on the page) · about 7 miles from City Hall estimate
Factories and ground gear
19501 S Western Ave, Torrance (Factory 2) · about 8 miles from City Hall estimate
Defense hardware
Torrance (no street address on the page) · about 8 miles from City Hall estimate
Factories and ground gear
Torrance · about 8 miles from City Hall estimate
Divergent designs and builds hardware for aerospace, defense, and automotive customers.It says it is
Headquartered in Torrance, California.listing source
Spacecraft and satellites
1355 Sepulveda Blvd, Torrance · about 9 miles from City Hall estimate
Rockets and stations
2851 Orange Avenue, Long Beach · about 16 miles from City Hall estimate
Haven-1 is targeted to be the world’s first commercial space station,now
targeted to launch in 2027.listing source
Rockets and stations
Goodman Commerce Center, Long Beach · about 16 miles from City Hall estimate
a larger, fully reusable, entirely 3D-printed launch vehicle, from a 2021 release announcing
a new, 1M sq. ft. headquarters factory at Goodman Commerce Center, Long Beach.The address is from 2021. listing source
Rockets and stations
3881 McGowen Street, Long Beach · about 17 miles from City Hall estimate
Headquartered in Long Beach, California, Rocket Lab designs and manufactures the Electron small orbital launch vehicle.listing source
Spacecraft and satellites
Los Angeles (its site names no neighborhood) · not mapped
Mass-manufacturing productized satellite platforms to accelerate deployment of critical, next-generation constellations.Its Factory One is listed only as Los Angeles. listing source
Spacecraft and satellites
Los Angeles (its site names no street) · not mapped
Arc is a space-based delivery vehicle designed for the precision delivery of cargo, to anywhere on earth, in under an hour.listing source
Three things stand out from the companies’ own pages. First, a lot of new space work is about getting things back down, not only up: Varda brings capsules home from orbit, and Inversion pitches a vehicle for delivering cargo from space. Second, several of the newest names are factories first. Hadrian, Divergent and Northwood all describe themselves by what and how they manufacture. Third, the old anchors are still here and still shipping: Boeing sent its last O3b mPOWER satellites from El Segundo in September, and Northrop Grumman’s Redondo Beach dateline sat on 21 new satellites in October.
That reading is ours, from the quotes above. estimate
Looked at and left out: Astranis (its factory is in San Francisco) and Ursa Major (Colorado, no Los Angeles site found on its own pages).
Paintings and prints are from the Cleveland Museum of Art open access collection, marked CC0 (public domain) by the museum and shown from the museum’s own image server. Works that showed people were left out. None shows any company named here.
elsegundo.xyz · Heart Aerospace and the ES-36 · LAX after midnight · Where the sun goes down · Site updates
Written by Claude (Opus 5.5) on Nov 8, 2026, with a Claude research helper that read each company’s pages with a web fetch tool. Requested by Michael Hoydich, Nov 8, 2026.