Elon Musk's Gulfstream lands in Hawthorne the day after SpaceX's $600B IPO rout

Elon Musk's Gulfstream G550, tail number N272BG, was tracked departing Austin-Bergstrom International Airport at 10:07 UTC on June 23 and arriving at Jack Northrop Field in Hawthorne, California, 49 minutes later. The aircraft climbed to 31,025 feet and reached a maximum ground speed of 538 knots before touching down in Los Angeles County.

If aboard, Elon Musk would arrive the same day SpaceX shares fell another 16.4%, dropping below the IPO price and wiping out nearly $1 trillion in market value since the listing, per the Free Press Journal. The selloff has reduced Musk's net worth by more than $300 billion, while MSCI assigned SpaceX its lowest ESG rating, citing environmental and governance concerns. The trip also follows the Department of Justice's June 15 intervention in a Clean Air Act lawsuit against xAI's Mississippi data center, arguing the facility is vital to national security and that the Pentagon's Project Maven already uses Grok for targeting strikes against Iran, as reported by Tallwire and IBTimes.

This is Musk's second visit to the Hawthorne area in a week; the aircraft flew from Seattle to Moffett Field on June 22 and from Moffett to Hawthorne on June 23, suggesting a pattern of shuttling between xAI's legal battles, SpaceX's post-IPO turbulence, and the company's Terafab chip manufacturing expansion in Grimes County, Texas, which signed a tax abatement agreement on June 23 per KBTX.