Now that Starbase is the state’s newest city, what will Elon Musk and SpaceX be using it for? And how much will eager Texas legislators enable his demands about Boca Chica Beach — previously for everyone — and disregard SpaceX rockets’ damage to the South Texas environment?
Starbase, the SpaceX industrial complex on the edge of the South Texas Coast about 20 miles outside of Brownsville, became the state’s newest city on Saturday by a vote of 212 to 6.
SpaceX founder and CEO Musk – who has been getting more attention for taking a hatchet to federal government as head of the Department of Government Efficiency over in Washington, D.C. than his rocket work these days – struck a jubilant tone when the election results came out.
“Starbase, Texas is now a real city!”
The results were already all but a foregone conclusion. Most of the 283 residents eligible to vote were SpaceX employees, as are most of about 500 people who live in the area. SpaceX owns most of the area property as well. And as a company owned by the world’s richest man, Musk, in what was once the poorest county in the nation, SpaceX tends to get what it – and Musk – wants.
So now Starbase will be a Type C city, a 1.6-mile municipality that will be able to levy 1.5 percent in property taxes. It will also, in effect, be a company town. Its first mayor, Bobby Peden, is a SpaceX vice president. He and the town’s two commissioners, who are also tied to SpaceX, all ran unopposed for office.
But now there’s the question of what that actually means. Musk has been aiming to make Starbase happen as an actual city since he first posted about it back in 2021. So now that Starbase is a reality, what will Musk, and SpaceX, be using it for?
Boca Chica Beach
Now that Starbase is a town we also know what it is that SpaceX, i.e. Musk, wants next, thanks to a pair of bills filed in the Texas Legislature.
Ever since SpaceX started running rocket tests starting in 2019 and Starship tests starting in 2023, one of the main points of contention between locals, local officials and SpaceX has been accessing Boca Chica Beach.
A popular spot for families, Boca Chica is located directly between the water and the lip of Starbase, so SpaceX has had to approach county officials to get permission to close off the local highway leading to the beach and the beach itself.
But some of the closures could soon be in the hands of Starbase officials. If it passes, a bill filed by state Sen. Adam Hinojosa earlier this year, will give the newly minted city of Starbase the ability to close Boca Chica Beach, Boca Chica State Park and State Highway 4 which leads to Boca Chica. (In a diabolical little twist, the bill also leaves the weekends in the hands of Cameron County officials, so when people can’t hit the beach on a Saturday due to a launch it will technically be the county’s fault.)
Despite having no support from local officials, the bill has already made it through the state Senate, while its companion bill has just made it out of committee in the state House.
The Environment
Environmentalists have been voicing concerns about SpaceX’s launches from Starbase — situated smack in the middle of both state and federal lands — ever since the first plumes of flame and smoke erupted from the platform into the delicate ecosystem that surrounds it.
The 2023 Starship explosion proved that point, creating a 385-acre-wide debris field and sparking a fire that burned 3.5 acres of the area.
Last year, SpaceX was caught dumping wastewater into the area, a move that resulted in both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (not surprising) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (staggering since this isn’t really something they do so very often) fining SpaceX $150,000 in violations.
SpaceX officials contended the whole thing was just a “disagreement about paperwork” which sounds plausible until you ponder how exactly wastewater being dumped would be different based on what has or hasn’t been filed.
Now that Starbase is incorporated, SpaceX, via the municipality, stands to have even more control over these pesky environmental issues. Setting their own regulations, overseeing who enforces them or if they are enforced at all will fall to the government officials of Starbase – the same ones who are all tied to SpaceX and Musk.
Musk, Post-DOGE?
And then there’s the Musk of it all.
For months as the head of DOGE, Musk has been parading around Washington, D.C. cutting government programs and becoming the most unpopular figure in the Trump administration.
But now Musk is set to step back from his government work, he claims, limited by the terms of his status as a special government employee (if he stays too long at the federal government dance he’ll be required to start making disclosures just like other federal employees) and by how his personal unpopularity has tanked the stock of Tesla, his electric car company.
But will he actually do so? If he does that might be the one bright spot in all of this. Maybe Musk, now possessing his very own SpaceX fiefdom to play with, will he stay in South Texas and focus on getting to Mars already. Based on polling numbers there are certainly plenty of people ready to see him go.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
