Texas County to Vote on Giving Musk's SpaceX Its Own City

Yahoo

13-02-2025

The Texas launch site of Elon Musk's SpaceX could soon have its very own city.
Officials on Wednesday approved an election sought by the aerospace firm that would allow residents who live near its Starbase site—almost all of them employees—to carve out a new municipality in an unincorporated area of Cameron County near the U.S.-Mexico border.
If the May 3 vote is successful, the new city would share the Starbase name with the site, where the Musk-led SpaceX constructs and launches its colossal Starship rockets.
It would also likely be governed from within Musk's orbit.
The form of municipality that would be created, a Type C under Texas law, is led by a mayor and two commissioners. The only candidate for mayor, according to a petition, is SpaceX security manager Gunnar Milburn.
That December petition, signed by 70 residents, stated most of the roughly 500 people in the area, which includes 100 children, were SpaceX employees.
Musk first floated the idea of the city in 2021.
Construction began on the SpaceX launch site in 2014 and, according to the Associated Press, just 10 of the 250 lots of land within the proposed city limits don't belong to the company.
A Starbase municipality would mark a notable addition to Musk's rapidly expanding empire in Texas, where he has relocated several businesses and himself, citing the conservative state's light regulatory touch and limited taxes.
He moved the headquarters of carmaker Tesla, a publicly traded company where he's CEO, and his tunnel construction business Boring Co. to the Austin metro area in 2021. His social media company X followed in 2023.
Tesla's opened a sprawling, 10-million-square-foot Gigafactory to build Cybertrucks near Austin in 2022, where its headquarters is now located.
The Boring Co. also has its own small community of mobile homes, and a general store to serve its workers, but it is within incorporated lands.
The New York Times reported last year that Musk bought a sprawling Texas compound and helped purchase an adjoining property with plans to build a place for his no less than 11 children and two of their three mothers to live in close proximity.
Musk denied he owned or that he was building a compound in Austin, and also denied claims that he had offered his sperm to friends and acquaintances in a gesture that would see more mini-Musks.
Over 3,400 full-time SpaceX employees and contractors work at the Starbase site, according to a Cameron County study issued last year.
Space industry stakeholders have fretted in recent months about Musk's close relationship with President Donald Trump, who tapped the world's richest man to lead a federal spending task force, fearing that SpaceX could benefit from government contracts at the expense of competitors.
'People are concerned what's in place to stop it,' one industry lobbyist told Politico in November. 'You're talking about two of the most unpredictable people in the world getting together. It's not like chocolate and peanut butter, and you get a great combination. You're talking about world dominance here.'
There are already signs that Musk's companies more broadly stand to benefit from his role as Trump benefactor, surrogate and sycophant.
On Wednesday, Drop Site News reported that the federal government earmarked $400 million to purchase armored vehicles Tesla, according to a new State Department procurement data.