McALLEN, Texas — McALLEN, Texas (AP) — SpaceX launches a new mission: turning its Starbase location into a new Texas city.
Billionaire Elon Musk The company’s firm sent a letter to local officials Thursday asking for an election to convert what it calls Starbase — the South Texas site where SpaceX builds and launches its massive Starship rockets — into an incorporated city. Residents of the area known as Starbase filed the petition, the company said.
The area is located at the southernmost tip of Texas, at Boca Chica Beach, near the Mexican border. Earlier this year, Musk announced that he was moving the head office from SpaceX and its social media company X from California to Texas.
“To continue to grow the workforce needed to rapidly develop and produce Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community. That is why we are requesting that Cameron County conduct an election to allow for the creation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande Valley,” Kathryn Lueders, Starbase’s general manager, wrote in a letter to the county.
Judge Eddie Teviño Jr. of Cameron County, the county’s top elected official, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Thursday.
It is not the first time that Starbase has become its own city. Musk proposed the idea in 2021 when he wrote a social media post that simply said: “Creating the city of Starbase, Texas.”
More than 3,400 full-time SpaceX employees and contractors work at the Starbase site, according to a local impact study published by Trevino earlier this year.
SpaceX’s rapid expansion in the region has sparked opposition from some local residents. Earlier this year, a group called Save RGV sued the company in July, alleging environmental violations and dumping polluted water into the nearby bay. SpaceX said in response that a state investigation found no environmental risks and calling the lawsuit “frivolous.”