Spacex is shooting for Mars, with Elon Musk’s rocket company running to approach humanity to be a multiparaneary species. Back here on Earth, the leader of the Efficiency Department of President Donald Trump (Doge) expects his company to have the opportunity to start his own government in Texas.
Starbase is where Spacex investigates, launches and tests rockets and could soon become the newest city in the United States.
However, this would not be your typical city; It would be a community of the company now full of mainly Spacex employees.
It has less than two square miles of size and approaches a natural preservation of the state of Texas and Boca Chica Beach along the Gulf coast.
A Starbase signal highlights Spacex’s ambition to get to Mars.
ABC News
Last year, Spacex presented a petition to the state of Texas to create a new city; The new municipality would work as its own city with the ability to create its own department of firefighters and emergency services, including a school district.
A few hundred current registered residents, including Musk itself that is registered to vote in a direction within the proposed city, now vote to make it official: what was once a small and quiet beach community on the outskirts of Brownsville, Texas, could be officially known as Starbase City.
Brownsville’s house, Rene Medrano, is 20 miles from the coast. Having gone to Boca Chica Beach as a child and bringing his own family once he aged, Medrano told ABC News that he is in his blood.
“The beach of a poor man was called because you did not have to pay anything to go to the beach that is not climbing to your car, climbing to your truck, gather the neighbors, gather the cousins, gather the aunts and uncles and have fun,” he said. “And see how it is … it’s alone, discouraging is what it is.”
Spacex had its first Starship launch in April 2023; Leaving successfully and clearing the launch platform, then losing control of its super heavy reinforcement engines. The company said it triggered Starship’s flight termination system after reinforcements did not separate and deviate its planned career.
Brownsville’s resident, Rene Medrano, has been wearing a Chinese boot throughout his life, and is concerned that Spacex limits his ability to continue going there.
ABC News
However, the company was laying the foundations for something much bigger for more than a decade. Medrano remembered a Spacex representative who went to his wife’s school to present a “small test site” in 2014, but said the person told the locals that the beach would remain accessible to them.
“Who would think they wanted to go to Mars 10 years later?” said. “I mean, that was never in the formula. You know?”
Since 2014, Spacex has had eight launches from Boca Chica with a staggered success. Now, the company is asking FAA to grant permits that allow Spacex to launch up to 25 times a year.
“You have many visitors who go to the island to see rocket launches. But then those people leave,” said Medrano. “We see the explosions of the spacecraft. We see the environments, you know, with all the rocket releases that are destroyed by that area. We see Boca Chica Beach as we knew, we no longer know that place.”
Bekah Hinojosa, who runs a local environmental group, told ABC News that Spacex has interrupted everyday life in the area.
“The rocket launches are dangerous. They make our houses stir. Spacex has been trapped by illegally undoing contaminated water in Boca Chica Beach, in our ecosystems,” he said. “The rent is going up. And everything is associated with, you know, Spacex entering this area and colonizing the region.”
The Spacex Spaceport is next to the Beach Boot, causing the locals to worry about access to the sandy coast.
ABC News
If this area becomes its own municipality, Spacex wants control of the beach and the nearby road that leads to the space port. The bills proposed in the Texas Legislature would give Starbase the power to close beaches and roads from Monday to Friday.
Texas state representative, Janie López, who written a bill Related to Starbase, he testified during an audience of the April 14 committee that will not take Boca Chica Beach away from the public.
“All he is doing is, if people decide on May 3 that they want to make their own municipality, then they will decide who their board of directors will be and make decisions about closures based on what FAA requires.”
There is real concern at the expense of Spacex ambitions for those who call home to the area: Medrano pointed out the State’s open beaches, which guarantees free public access to its sandy coasts.
“Give us the beach … I mean, what is difficult for that?” said. “Go Mars, do your thing, get your rockets and go. But let us do ours too.”
ABC News contacted Spacex to comment, but has not had news.
