SpaceX's Starbase Is Officially a City. Some Neighbors Aren't Thrilled

Scientific American

a day ago

Before SpaceX's Starship lost control and exploded over the Indian Ocean during its ninth test flight, the 400-foot-tall megarocket blasted off from Texas's newest city.
Starbase, situated on 1.5 square miles of the Lone Star State's southernmost tip in the Rio Grande Valley, is mostly made up of SpaceX employees living on company-owned property and abuts a habitat for endangered wildlife, as well as a public beach.
Starbase serves as the main testing and launch location for Starship, SpaceX's planned fully reusable spacecraft, which is meant to revolutionize human and uncrewed space travel with its gargantuan payload capacity and rapid-fire flight cadence. If Starship's development proceeds as planned, the megarocket could soon be ferrying crew and cargo alike to multiple otherworldly destinations—such as the lunar surface, for NASA's Artemis program, and Mars, in fulfillment of SpaceX founder Elon Musk's long-stated dream. But nearby residents worry about less glamorous local effects, fearing that a town built around the space company could continue SpaceX's alleged pattern of polluting the area and blocking access to the nearby beach and other open public spaces.
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'SpaceX has already proven itself to be an extremely bad neighbor,' says Christopher Basaldú, an anthropologist and environmentalist and co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, who lives in nearby Brownsville, Tex. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Long before it was Starbase, the area's beaches, tidal flats and wetlands were of great significance to the Indigenous Carrizo/Comecrudo people (or Esto'k Gna in their own language). Many of them still live nearby as members of the modern-day Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. Today the area is largely Latino and among the poorest in the country. Musk's space company began buying up property there in 2012; ever since company housing and rocket-related infrastructure have steadily sprouted.
'We've grown quite a bit just in the last couple of years. It's a couple hundred employees [and] their families, living amongst actual rockets,' said Daniel Huot, a SpaceX communications manager, during a company livestream before Tuesday's Starship test flight.
Huot added that the move to incorporate what was formerly Boca Chica Village as Starbase will help the company 'scale more quickly [to] try to build out the best community possible for all the people that are building the future of humanity's place in space.'
Even before SpaceX began launching rockets at the site, neighbors complained about potential environmental woes stemming from the company's operations. In a 2018 press conference, Musk dismissed such concerns, saying 'We've got a lot of land with no one around, and so if [a rocket] blows up, it's cool.'
The first launch of the 40-story-tall Starship vehicle in April 2023 didn't entirely proceed as planned —it blew up the concrete launch pad and left a literal crater behind. Particulate debris, as well as concrete and steel shrapnel from the botched launch, scattered far and wide across the surrounding landscape, igniting fires and slamming into protected habitats and public beaches. Ash, dust and sand grains hurled aloft by this first Starship flight test rained down as far out as Port Isabel, Tex., about five miles from the launch site.
Local environmentalists have also sounded the alarm on how the company's activities at Starbase could increase chemical and sonic pollution that puts migratory birds and other vulnerable endangered species in the area at greater risk.
Despite these brewing tensions, Starbase was incorporated in early May, making it the first new city in Cameron County, Texas, in 30 years.
Only people who live in the immediate area—almost all of them SpaceX employees—were eligible to vote for the new city. Residents voted 212 for and six against. The city's mayor and commissioners—all current or former SpaceX employees—ran unopposed. 'Now [SpaceX has] stolen away not only a neighborhood but the land around it, which had been basically environmentally untouched areas,' says Basaldú, who is a member of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe.
Starbase's boundaries snake along State Highway 4, which provides the only access to both Starbase and the open-to-the-public Boca Chica Beach. A bill pending in the Texas Legislature would shift control over weekday closures of the beach and nearby roadways from the county commissioners to Starbase city leaders now that Starbase is a municipality under law.
'As a community, we were there first,' says Suquiery Santillana, a resident of nearby Brownsville, Tex., who has visited Boca Chica Beach since childhood. 'I'm almost 50, and now my grandkids are going.' Her family's trips to the isolated shoreline now include wide-eyed roadside spectators from all across the country who want to catch a glimpse of the SpaceX launch site. While Santillana is happy that SpaceX has brought jobs to the area, she would like the company to communicate more about upcoming closures and launch plans with locals.
Members of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe also trace their creation story to this once-pristine beach. The intermittent access restrictions imposed by SpaceX's launches, some tribe members say, limit them from freely participating in traditions such as fishing and tribal ceremonies that have been taking place on their ancestral land for thousands of years.
Activity at the site could soon ramp up even more. On May 22 the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it had granted approval for SpaceX to increase the annual number of Starbase launches from five to 25. Eventually, Starship flights from the site could far exceed that because the vehicle is designed for very fast turnaround times and an unprecedentedly high launch cadence. Starship's sheer size, coupled with more frequent launches, could balloon Starbase's overall environmental footprint while also essentially shutting down Highway 4 for much of the year. The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For now, Starbase is poised to continue its rapid development and expansion, with plans in the works for more housing, offices and rocket launch facilities. Jim Chapman of the local environmental justice nonprofit Save RGV (Rio Grande Valley) worries that Starbase's incorporation could allow SpaceX to skirt important regulatory hurdles. '[SpaceX has] fewer layers of bureaucracy that [it has] to go through and get approval from,' he says. 'But on the other hand, I haven't really seen the county denying [it] anything.'
As SpaceX vies to fly ever more powerful rockets in pursuit of Musk's interplanetary aspirations, local residents also fear that the company's launch activity and its proximity to new natural gas projects could pose grave threats to Rio Grande Valley communities. One such project currently under construction is less than six miles from the launch site—too close for comfort, some critics say, given the possibility of volatile explosions sparked by showers of fiery rocket debris.
If Musk's latest projections are to be trusted (he often overpromises and underdelivers on meeting ambitious rocketry deadlines), additional Starship test flights will blast off from Starbase every few weeks for the rest of the summer. Time will tell if the company will be mindful of those who live next door.