Simple vote turns Musk’s goals for Starbase metropolis in Texas into actuality

Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s dream of gaining metropolis standing for his SpaceX spaceport within the southern US state of Texas turned a actuality on Saturday, when voters overwhelmingly backed turning his Starbase into a brand new municipality.

The poll, which additionally named a senior SpaceX consultant as its mayor with 100% of the early vote, was by no means actually doubtful.

Many of the 283 eligible voters had been SpaceX staff on the website on Boca Chica Bay bordering Mexico, or had connections to the corporate, whose billionaire chief has lengthy eyed a human mission to Mars.

“Starbase, Texas,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X, “Is now an actual metropolis!”

His put up got here after polls closed and unofficial outcomes revealed by Cameron County confirmed an unambiguous 97.7% backing the mission.

Musk himself is registered to vote, Cameron County Election Coordinator Remi Garza advised AFP, however the South African-born embattled 53-year-old had but to forged his poll when the early voting interval closed on April 29.

Official paperwork present that just about 500 folks stay across the base in Cameron County, on land largely owned by SpaceX or its staff.

The change permits Starbase to regulate constructing and allowing and keep away from different regulatory hurdles, whereas amassing taxes and writing native regulation.

The vote got here at a tough time for Musk, who is predicted to cut back his position because the unofficial head of US President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting “Division of Authorities Effectivity” to as an alternative focus extra on his troubled automotive firm, Tesla.

The early voting additionally confirmed as mayor Bobby Peden, who’s vice chairman of testing and launches at SpaceX, in line with LinkedIn. He was the one identify on the poll.

The Texas base launched in 2019 and is a key testing website for the corporate’s rocket launches.

Not everybody had been upbeat concerning the prospect of a SpaceX city.

Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Community, earlier voiced concern over the environmental impression, warning of extra “destruction.”

“They might try extra unlawful dumping, they’d construct up their harmful rocket operations and trigger extra seismic exercise, trigger our houses to shake, and that they’d destroy extra of the wildlife habitat within the area,” she advised AFP earlier than election day.

Environmental considerations

It was Musk himself who proposed the identify Starbase in a social media put up throughout a go to to the ability 4 years in the past.

Then, final December, common supervisor of SpaceX Kathryn Lueders appealed to native authorities to grant the positioning metropolis standing.

Lueders argued in her letter that SpaceX already maintained infrastructure there like roads, schooling providers and medical care.

She promised the creation of the brand new metropolis wouldn’t undermine SpaceX efforts to mitigate the bottom’s environmental impression.

SpaceX didn’t reply to an AFP request for remark.

The hub overlooks the Gulf of Mexico—renamed the Gulf of America by Trump—and there may be controversy over entry to Boca Chica Seaside.

A Texas Home State Affairs committee rejected a invoice this week by Republican lawmakers that will have given coastal cities with spaceports management over seashore entry.

Hinojosa, the activist, stated SpaceX has restricted entry to Boca Chica Seaside for a few years and advised AFP she anxious the vote may minimize entry fully to a seashore “our households have been going to for generations.”

The Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, descendants of an Indigenous tribe within the space, has additionally complained.

In 2024, the Environmental Safety Company and Texas authorities discovered that SpaceX was liable for repeated spills and releasing pollution into Texas waterways.

In response to studies that its rockets had brought about harm to wild fowl nests, Musk quipped on social media: “To make up for this heinous crime, I’ll chorus from having omelet for per week.”

© 2025 AFP