SpaceX’s next mission has nothing to do with rockets. Instead, it’s aiming to turn its Starbase facility into a new Texas city.
In a post on X on Thursday, SpaceX chief Elon Musk shared a letter from the spaceflight company to Judge Eddie Treviño Jr., the top elected official in Cameron County where the facility is located, requesting an election to determine whether Starbase, Texas, should be incorporated as a city.
“Starbase is home to the development and production of SpaceX’s Starship, a project designed to fundamentally alter humanity’s access to space,” the letter said. “We are investing billions in infrastructure and generating hundreds of millions in income and taxes for local businesses and government, all with the goal of making South Texas the Gateway to Mars,” the letter said.
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Arguing its case, SpaceX that to continue growing the workforce necessary to rapidly develop and manufacture its next-generation Starship megarocket, it needs “the ability to grow Starbase as a community. That is why we are requesting that Cameron County call an election to enable the incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Pio Grande Valley.”
The company added that creating Starbase City would “streamline the processes required to build the amenities necessary to make the area a world class place to live-for the hundreds already calling it home, as well as for prospective workers eager to help build humanity’s future in space.”
Up to now, every reported reference to Starbase usually comes alongside the words, “near Boca Chica, Texas.” Incorporating Starbase as a city would change all that.
The Associated Press noted that Musk first mooted the idea in 2021 when he wrote in a social media post: “Creating the city of Starbase, Texas.” But Judge Treviño Jr. said that this latest development marked the first time that a petition has been officially filed.
“Our legal and elections administration will review the petition, see whether or not it complied with all of the statutory requirements, and then we’ll go from there,” Treviño said on Thursday.
While environmental campaigners have accused Elon Musk’s spaceflight company of water pollution and habitat destruction around the Starbase site, SpaceX said in the letter that becoming a city would have “no impact on SpaceX’s commitment to being a science-backed steward of the local environment.”
It wouldn’t be the first time for a name change like this to occur. The Japanese city of Koromo changed its name to Toyota in 1959 to reflect the economic significance of the automaker.