IN THE BACK of an unmarked office building close to LAX, the main airport of Los Angeles, stands a rack of unarmed hypersonic missiles the size of small drainpipes. On February 6th a camouflaged truck ferried one away to New Mexico for a test launch with the US Air Force. Such activity used to be common in El Segundo, the LA neighbourhood that was once a hub of military spaceflight. Then the cold war ended and with it much of the west-coast weapons business. Now it’s coming back. Castelion, which makes the projectiles, was founded in 2022 by three alumni of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-and-satellite company, which was also created in El Segundo.
