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Sirfun

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Construction junkie too.

Rarely does a construction size facilitate production(i.e. qty/da). It was just a beyond humungous task!

It was the water table, perched water and fill on-site that caught my attention. The low elevation of the ground below the freeway, creek traversing the site(read drainage) and the timeline hit to lift(raise in elevation) and backfill(dewatering and dirt fill) added to the overall time-to-completion.

My concern continues that the site remains at-risk to rain, runoff flooding and underground water that impacts the operational status of Tesla and its Austin factory production longterm.
As a retired guy (construction junkie) with time on my hands, I was Very interested in rumors of Tesla buying land in Texas. Originally there were rumors of a different location that wasn't as large but what I thought was a perfect location. It even had access to build a train siding. So, when this location next to the Colorado River was confirmed by Elon, and I went on Google Earth and saw the location, I was not impressed. Exactly the same reaction as you are stating. But, when I took Googles history tool and looked at that land before the freeway was built, it made more sense. That was good land before they started digging it all up. It was all good bottom land, and actually, they moved dirt to raise the freeway. I still have some reservations, as you are saying, about possible flooding. But hopefully they've got it all accounted for. Here's an image I grabbed off of Google Earth from 2001.
Tesla Cybertruck GIGA TEXAS size is ?? austin2001
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rr6013

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As a retired guy (construction junkie) with time on my hands, I was Very interested in rumors of Tesla buying land in Texas. Originally there were rumors of a different location that wasn't as large but what I thought was a perfect location. It even had access to build a train siding. So, when this location next to the Colorado River was confirmed by Elon, and I went on Google Earth and saw the location, I was not impressed. Exactly the same reaction as you are stating. But, when I took Googles history tool and looked at that land before the freeway was built, it made more sense. That was good land before they started digging it all up. It was all good bottom land, and actually, they moved dirt to raise the freeway. I still have some reservations, as you are saying, about possible flooding. But hopefully they've got it all accounted for. Here's an image I grabbed off of Google Earth from 2001.
austin2001.jpg
GigaAUSTIN el.=430 .v. CO River el =400

SWAG from similar projects GigaAUSTIN sits atop 30” – 60” water table yearound. NBD. Much less concerned. Thanks!

Was beautiful black bottom soil before escarpment. Lovely eminent domain.
 

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I used to have office space in a former Goodyear tire warehouse. It was serviced (at one time) by four railroads and numerous trucking companies. I think it was around 800,000 square feet.
I worked there part time to pay my rent and one of my duties was to keep the eight square acre roof patched (it leaked like a sieve).
The Austin plant dwarfs that warehouse. I'd hate to be the roof patcher there.
 
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I put a baseball field, a football field and US capital in there to give some perspective.

GT2.JPG
Well done, I went on Google Earth to confirm your scale. Looking good, The capital measured 750' to the 1,130' across for Giga Texas.
 


Diehard

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Well done, I went on Google Earth to confirm your scale. Looking good, The capital measured 750' to the 1,130' across for Giga Texas.
I tried to avoid any conversion or interpretation since there would be good chance I goof something up. I made sure I copied everything from Google map at the same scale. There is always a chance they used different satellites at different altitude but I don't care enough about accuracy to check for that.
 

TechOps

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I've driven by there and you get a sense from the freeway that it's *enormous*

On Friday I landed at the Austin airport and you can see it very easily out the windows on the left side of the plane. In fact, I have been watching so many of Joe T.'s daily drone videos of the construction, I recognized the land around it before I even saw the building :D

I live in a high-rise in downtown Austin, and you can see the factory just looking out the window. It's a 7.9 mile distance.

I'm sure it's clearly visible from SpaceX rockets as they orbit the earth.
 

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I'm sure it's clearly visible from SpaceX rockets as they orbit the earth.
They used to say that the great wall of China was the only man-made construction that could be seen from space. This has since been debunked but maybe we need to get someone on confirm from space if the GigaTexas factory is visible from space. If so, this Wikipedia page will need to get an update to include Tesla Giga factory(ies).
 

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That roof is big enough to grow a mess of corn.
Gigafactories are a real case of “if you build it, they will come.”
 


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Austin from 41,000 feet. Wonder where Giga Texas is hmmm?

5F75A6C7-6A04-4AB8-9640-50455608F71C.jpeg
That’s some big advertising space there. Wonder how long before they get a Giant Tesla banner across the top.
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