The spaceflight company SpaceX has made itself a new home: Residents of Texas’ Cameron County voted on May 3 to incorporate Starbase, Texas, a city located near Boca Chica along the Lone Star State’s southern border. The city will serve as a “company town” for SpaceX, the brainchild brand of controversial tech mogul and DOGE head Elon Musk. But exactly why SpaceX is making this move remains a bit of a mystery.
What is Starbase, Texas?
It is a “newly incorporated city made up almost exclusively of SpaceX employees and people connected to the company,” said NBC News. Only about 300 people who lived inside the proposed boundaries could vote, and they approved its incorporation 212 to 6. The city itself “covers about 1.5 square miles at the southern tip of Texas, a coastal spot nestled against the Mexico border.” It is already “home to SpaceX headquarters, and it’s where the company builds its boosters and engines and launches its huge Starship rocket on test flights.”
The new city itself is quite small, with a population of about 500, according to Bloomberg. It is “crisscrossed by a few roads and dappled with airstream trailers and modest midcentury homes,” said The Associated Press. The incorporation of an official city appears to be largely symbolic, as SpaceX “already manages roads and utilities, as well as ‘the provisions of schooling and medical care’ for those living on the property.”
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Why is SpaceX doing this?
The exact reasoning remains unclear, as SpaceX officials “have said little about exactly why they want a company town,” said the AP. However, it appears SpaceX feels that the city will assist in ramping up infrastructure for the brand’s space launches. Incorporating Starbase will “help us continue building the best community possible for the men and women building the future of humanity’s place in space,” the city’s X account said.
The city has “grown alongside Musk’s ambitions — chiefly, developing a rocket that can land humans on Mars,” said The Wall Street Journal. It has “created thousands of new jobs in South Texas” and will likely move along development of the Starship rocket for Mars testing. But the city itself will also have a “wide set of powers,” as Starbase could “create zoning rules, raise revenue and hire staff to carry out town functions.”
Still, this could be easier said than done. Whatever the “goals and ambitions of the new city of Starbase are, the first thing they’re going to have to look at is what the budget is,” Alan Bojorquez, a Texas attorney who works on municipal law, told the Journal. There might be projects beyond just space travel, too, as the controversial Musk tries to buy back some goodwill. SpaceX is “working on a $22 million community building project” in Starbase, according to Yahoo News, and also “reportedly plans to build a school called Ad Astra, named after the one Musk launched for five of his children in 2014.”
In order to help with more of the city’s infrastructure, there has been “talk of connecting the city to a local water system,” said The New York Times, much the same way that SpaceX already manages many of Starbase’s other utilities. There are also plans to build a power plant and a “commercial center along with a sushi restaurant near Mr. Musk’s house.”
