Posted on 08/08/2026 7:51:27 AM PDT by SmokingJoe
Sawyer Merritt:
I don't think most people understand the massive scale of investment Tesla & SpaceX are making in Texas right now.
Everything the two companies are/going to build across the state:
• Terafab (Grimes County)
• Gigasat factory (in Bastrop, currently under construction)
• Optimus factory (at Giga Texas, currently under construction)
• Advanced technology fab (at Giga Texas, currently under construction)
• Tesla Project Crystal Sun (big solar cell plant in Fort Bend County. Late 2026 construction start date)
• Expanded Starlink terminal production facility (in Bastrop, currently under construction)
• Further Starbase expansion (in Starbase)
• Tesla Megafactory 3 (in Brookshire, just started prod)
https://x.com/i/status/2085779483433521498
(Excerpt) Read more at x.com ...
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And Bastrop used to be such a nice, boring little place with cheep houses...
To understand how big that is, its area is equal to around:
• 15.4 Pentagons
• 10 Giga Texas factories
• 595 Eiffel Tower bases
• 1,736 American football fields
• 5.4 Dubai Airport Terminal 3s
• 5.5 New Century Global Centers
• 6.2 Abraj Al-Bait complexes
• 6.6 Istanbul Airport terminals
• 9.5 Venetian Macao resorts
• 11.2 CentralWorld complexes
• 16.1 Shanghai Towers
• 17.9 Malls of America
• 21.9 Willis Towers
• 22.5 Taipei 101s
• 23.3 Boeing Everett factories
• 23.5 Petronas Twin Tower complexes
• 25.5 Palaces of Parliament
• 28.6 One World Trade Centers
• 30 Burj Khalifas
• 32.3 SoFi Stadiums
• 35.7 Apple Park ring buildings
• 44.5 Empire State Buildings
• 82.6 Palaces of Westminster
• 83.5 Chrysler Buildings
• 114.3 Las Vegas Spheres
• 120.7 Buckingham Palaces
• 147.1 Palaces of Versailles
• 124 Golden Gate Bridges
• 175 Great Pyramid bases
• 383 Colosseum base areas
The scale is almost impossible to imagine.
Grimes county?
Building in a county that shares the same name as your ex wife has got to be funny.
After he retired and moved to Grimes county, my stepfather became a judge there.
All what California lost - thousands of jobs and tons of tax revenue from Musk’s enterprises.
“Musk left California due to disagreements with state regulations, high taxes, and political conflict.
In July 2024, he cited California’s Assembly Bill 1955 — which bans schools from forcibly outing transgender students to parents—as the ‘final straw,’ prompting him to announce the relocation of SpaceX and X headquarters to Texas.”
May he find much success there.
Smelled like off-gassing from the refineries, too ;-)
Should come with it’s own power plant.
SpaceX and Tesla's planned Terafab semiconductor megafactory in Grimes County, Texas, will generate its own power by building on-site natural gas-fired power plants paired with large-scale battery storage arrays rather than relying on Tesla solar panels or stressing the local public grid.
Very important:
The Republican Party holds political power in Grimes County, Texas. The county is reliably conservative, with its local leadership, elected county commissioners, and major county offices overwhelmingly registered as and running on the Republican ticket.
I wonder which of the thousands and thousands of reasons that Musk chose a civilized state over Corrupt-O-fornia were the most important.
“All what California lost - thousands of jobs and tons of tax revenue from Musk’s enterprises.”
my first thought as well ... if this trend continues, silicon valley will dry up and blow away .... it’s not just the primary fabs that are lost lost, but the entire secondary supply chains that are lost as well ...
Hollywood is already drying up, with much movie-making moving everywhere BUT California ... Silicon Valley looks to be next ... pretty soon, California will be little more than millions of illegal aliens living off of “free” everything ...
I wonder how many H 1Bs he will apply for. I like Elon, but he likes Indians.
“Tesla, Musk’s largest employer, has seen a significant rise in H-1B usage, securing over 5,400 visas (including new hires, renewals, and amendments) between 2018 and 2024. In fiscal year 2024 alone, USCIS approved 1,767 H-1B petitions for Tesla”
I have argued that with things like this and the recent space x IPO Texas has actually moved up massively in states versus national economies.
Texas has probably gone from being the 9th largest economy in the world to something like 5th.
And of course California is imploding alongside NY.
Perhaps he could assist us in ousting our current Governor, along with all of The Democrats that run as Republicans
Very true. Abbot loves his Indians. He proclaimed Frisco is and Indian city for Indians. And he sure isn’t doing much to stop the Islamic take over.
Will there be jobs? I drive past massive data centers and Amazon warehouses out in Eastern Oregon when I go to the coast. Maybe there are four or five cars. Everything except the trucking is automated. I would imagine all those factories won’t require more than a few maintenance mechanics to fix robots.
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