Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Technoking of Tesla has been pushing for ‘Starbase’ for a while.
Musk may or may not be shifting base, but he certainly wants more staff at his new ‘Starbase.’
People living in the calm location of Boca Chica, a remote beach community in the southernmost part of Texas, had a life filled with tranquillity.
Then Elon Musk came up with his SpaceX company there.
Billionaire Elon Musk had fixated on Boca Chica in Texas, US almost a year ago.
In March, he announced that he wants to rename it as ‘Starbase.’
SpaceX is currently building a new factory in Texas for its satellite-based broadband service Starlink, according to a job posting from the company, as billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk continues to invest in the southern US state.
In August 2014, SpaceX announced that they had selected the Boca Chica area as the location for their South Texas spaceport and that their "control center" would actually be on land in the village property, while the launch complex would be located two miles to the east.
Limited construction began that year, but more extensive construction activities did not begin until approximately 2018.
By May 2018, the site was expected to be used exclusively for launches of the SpaceX second-generation fully-reusable launch vehicle, which was eventually named SpaceX Starship.
The Flight testing of the SpaceX Starship with the newly designed Raptor rocket engine began in 2019 and is being continued till now.
With the village being only a couple of miles from the test site, in August 2019, Cameron County officials followed the FAA Regulatory and began to request residents to stand outside their homes during any tests that involve loading of propellant fuel, due to perceived danger from shock-wave induced broken windows in the event of a test anomaly and explosion.
In September 2019, SpaceX extended an offer to buy each of the houses in Boca Chica Village for three times the fair market value along with an offer of VIP invitations to future launch events.
The amount of the offer (3x) was said to be "non-negotiable."
In April 2021, Musk appealed to people on Twitter to move there: “Please consider moving to Starbase or greater Brownsville/South Padre area in Texas & encourage friends to do so! SpaceX’s hiring needs for engineers, technicians, builders & essential support personnel of all kinds are growing rapidly.”
Building a city is not a new concept.
But doing so using the influence of something is certainly new.
Musk’s Starbase tweet came as SpaceX posted a new job opening for remote engineers in Austin, where it said the company is “breaking ground on a new, state of the art manufacturing facility” that will aim to manufacture millions of consumer-facing devices that they will ship directly to customers (Starlink dishes, Wi-Fi routers, mounting hardware, etc).
SpaceX generally has to fly its engineers to Texas from California and pay for all the extra costs.
This leads to an increase in operating costs for every project.
And this is the reason why SpaceX wants to build a city.
While building something or giving any kinds of commercial services would need permission from regulatory authorities, it’s not always in the best interest of the locals.
That is, if the area gets crowded enough, then taxes and the prices of everything will start to increase.
One thing to note here is that the nearest city to the Boca Chica launch site, that is, Brownsville’s population increased significantly in the past 2-3 years because of SpaceX’s presence.
This might not be a bad thing for the city as of now but certainly, this is the best for SpaceX and their future projects.
Next up on DiscoverZen, we will be discussing “Why does SpaceX Starship Belly Flop?“.
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