Joe Hansen(@joehansen):🚨 SpaceX is standing up a turbine-blade foundry in Bastrop • The Information: SpaceX is laying groundwork for a plant that casts blades and vanes for large gas turbines • Site is Bastrop, Texas, next to existing SpaceX manufacturing • Same shop is meant to feed data-center turbines and Raptor turbopump castings • Morgan Stanley: same alloys, furnaces and skilled workers for both lines • Elon: in-house blades and vanes can pull gas turbines online by up to 18 months • Casting jobs for that site have been listed since April I see this as one building doing two jobs. - Raptor already needs that metal. - Data centers now need the same class of part and the outside foundries are booked into 2030. They still have to qualify the bigger blades. A job listing is not first metal. If Bastrop actually pours both, the 18-month claim stops being a slide and becomes a date.

2026.08.30 06:38

🚨 SpaceX is standing up a turbine-blade foundry in Bastrop • The Information: SpaceX is laying groundwork for a plant that casts blades and vanes for large gas turbines • Site is Bastrop, Texas, next to existing SpaceX manufacturing • Same shop is meant to feed data-center turbines and Raptor turbopump castings • Morgan Stanley: same alloys, furnaces and skilled workers for both lines • Elon: in-house blades and vanes can pull gas turbines online by up to 18 months • Casting jobs for that site have been listed since April I see this as one building doing two jobs. - Raptor already needs that metal. - Data centers now need the same class of part and the outside foundries are booked into 2030. They still have to qualify the bigger blades. A job listing is not first metal. If Bastrop actually pours both, the 18-month claim stops being a slide and becomes a date.

Joe Hansen@joehansen

2026.08.30 06:30

SpaceX already makes turbine blades. For Merlin. High heat, high RPM, cracks that NASA would not accept on a crew flight. They spent years on that and changed the part. The next job is bigger blades for gas turbines that feed data centers. Those parts sit in a few foundries with years of backlog. Elon wants the casting inside SpaceX to cut that wait by as much as 18 months. Rocket blades exist. Power-plant blades do not, not yet.