Ballots have been cast in Cameron County, Texas, where voters are deciding on whether to incorporate a new city on the current site of Boca Chica Beach. If the measure passes, a new entity will rise in its place: Starbase.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been using the otherwise quiet strip of sand at Texas’s southernmost point as a rocket launch site since 2014, after quietly buying up land over the previous two years. In 2024, the company headed by Musk submitted a petition to local officials calling for an election that would give the company city status. The petition was approved in February, and the election took place today.
Starbase, Texas, will soon be an official new city https://t.co/ZODDi4EZKA
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 13, 2025
Most of the 283 registered voters in the community are SpaceX employees and their family members, and most voted early. Meaning a positive outcome is likely assured. Once official, SpaceX vice president Bobby Peden will become the city’s mayor, after running unopposed.
Incorporation will grant Starbase ‘Type C’ city status and the right to grow the city from 500 to 5,000. Taxes, development, and access to the public beach anytime SpaceX wants to move a rocket will all be within their remit. More power is on its way, too. A bill currently working its way through state legislature would hand officials the right to close public roads and Boca Chica Beach to outsiders.
Local environmental groups are concerned about the increase in light pollution and scattered debris from rocket launches.
Starbase, Texas, rocket factory pic.twitter.com/bfUImi9ZCY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2024
“Elon Musk has proven to be unfit to govern,” Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, told The Texas Tribune. “The real boss there would be Elon Musk.”
Residents in the nearby town of Brownsville, with a population of 190,000, view the expansion as an attempt to erase their community. They claim residents were advised to relocate away from dangerous rocket launches, only to have SpaceX employees move in.
“The creation of a SpaceX company town gives greater power and more of a say in what the Rio Grande Valley should look like,” community organizer Denisce Palacios told the Tribune. “They’re all people from out of state who only care about their company, not our community.”
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