SpaceX fires up the shuttle to Grimes County the week a 100-million-square-foot Terafab gets approved

SpaceX flew its 2002 Boeing 737-800, N154TS, from Zamperini Field in Torrance to Laguna Park Community Airport in Grimes County on June 11, a 2-hour-30-minute hop that landed mid-afternoon. The aircraft, a high-capacity employee shuttle that usually works the Los Angeles-to-Brownsville route, touched down in Texas farm country rather than at the familiar Starbase strip.

The flight arrived the same week the Grimes County Commissioners Court approved a reinvestment zone and a 100% tax abatement for SpaceX's proposed Terafab facility — a 100-million-square-foot semiconductor plant that, per ConchoValleyHomepage.com, will cost between $55 billion and $119 billion and produce one terawatt of processing power annually. The approval, passed 4-1 on June 9, includes a 35-year agreement with annual payments of $20 million to the county. The brief shuttle run from California suggests SpaceX is moving personnel and engineers to the site faster than the paperwork suggests.

The Grimes County trip is a departure from the 737's usual beat. Over the previous week the aircraft shuttled almost exclusively between Los Angeles International and Brownsville, with a stop at Thermal, California, on June 8. Fleeing the familiar LAX–KBRO rotation for a rural airstrip near a future chip fab is the kind of quiet logistics move that precedes very loud construction.