Goodbye Boca Chica Beach, hello Starbase. Elon Musk is now the proud leader of a soon-to-be-incorporated city in Cameron County, Texas.
On Saturday, an overwhelming majority of voters cast ballots in favor of turning SpaceX’s home base into its very own city. A huge 97.7 percent of the electorate voted in favor of incorporating Starbase, Texas—a number that is less surprising than it seems, given that the vast majority of its inhabitants are SpaceX employees. Residents will see the company take ownership of the two-square-mile parcel of land that’s located between a Texas State nature preserve and Boca Chica Beach.
Starbase is the culmination of a plan many years in the making. Musk’s SpaceX has been using the otherwise quiet strip of sand as a rocket launch site since 2014, after steadily buying up land over the previous two years.
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In 2024, SpaceX 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 on Saturday.
Only 283 inhabitants are registered voters, mainly SpaceX employees and their family members, who have been moving into the area for the last few years. SpaceX vice president Bobby Peden will now become the city’s mayor, after running unopposed.
Incorporation grants Starbase “Type C” city status, and the right to grow from 500 to 5,000 residents. 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 Texas’ state legislature would hand officials the right to close public roads and Boca Chica Beach to outsiders.
Local environmental groups, however, have long been concerned about the increase in light pollution and scattered debris from rocket launches.
“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 the 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.”
While the richest man on Earth appears to be making a departure from the seat of power in America, he now has a new kingdom to rule over.
