SPACEX BUILDS ITS OWN TURBINE-BLADE FOUNDRY TO CUT GAS POWER DELAYS BY 18 MONTHS

Summary from the TLDR Hardware newsletter

Elon Musk has confirmed that a secretive SpaceX foundry in Bastrop, Texas is meant to cast turbine blades in-house, tackling a manufacturing bottleneck he says currently limits how fast natural gas turbines can come online for AI data centers, up to 18 months faster if it works. The blades sit in a turbine's hottest section at 3,000-3,600°F, roughly 800°F above the melting point of their own alloy, survivable only through internal cooling channels, thermal coatings, and a single-crystal casting process grown slowly in a vacuum furnace, a technique just four companies worldwide have mastered at industrial scale, and all are currently sold out.