Elon Musk flies to Hawthorne as SpaceX Starship work mounts

Elon Musk flew from Danz Ranch Airport to Jack Northrop Field Hawthorne Municipal Airport on Monday in his primary Gulfstream G650ER, tail N628TS. The 2-hour 43-minute hop from a South Texas airfield near Starbase arrived in the LA basin at 17:25 UTC as summer operations at both facilities intensify.

The Hawthorne destination — home to SpaceX headquarters — comes the same week the company is preparing for what sources describe as the next integrated Starship test flight from Boca Chica, pending FAA approval. SpaceX has been conducting a rapid cadence of static fires and ground systems checks in recent weeks, per coverage from NASASpaceflight.com. Musk has publicly described the upcoming flight as critical to the program's orbital-refueling demonstration schedule.

The trip fits a recurring pattern: nearly half of Elon Musk's recent logged flights in late May shuffled between Hawthorne, Silicon Valley, and the Pacific Northwest, typical of weeks when he splits attention between SpaceX engineering work, xAI compute-cluster logistics, and meetings with X staff. This particular leg bypasses the typical Austin base and instead stages directly from the Starbase support airfield.