Musk’s SpaceX Prepares to Launch Starbase, Its Own Town in Texas

A bunch of drab single family houses and a Tesla in every driveway under the blazing hot Texas sun. Sign me up!

Honestly, I beginning to question why I became a rocket scientist.

Musk’s SpaceX Prepares to Launch Starbase, Its Own Town in Texas

Employees have been voting in an election expected to turn its rocket complex into a town

By Micah Maidenberg and Harriet Torry, WSJ

May 2, 2025 10:00 am ET

BROWNSVILLE, Texas—Texas’ newest town could soon be led by a mayor who works for SpaceX. The voters are mostly SpaceX rocket builders, renting homes from SpaceX, on SpaceX property.

Elon Musk’s rocket-and-satellite business is poised to re-create the company town. On Saturday, an election is set to decide whether the properties that informally make up Starbase, home to SpaceX’s Starship rocket, should be incorporated into a new municipality.

If a majority of voters agree, officials elected to govern it would gain a broad set of powers under state law—and could face tricky questions given their ties to the company.

Musk has built SpaceX into the world’s busiest launch company. In South Texas, SpaceX has been aggressively expanding its operations with rocket testing and manufacturing facilities, a launchpad, offices, housing and more. Around 3,400 employees and contractors work on site, the company said last year.

Turning Starbase into a town would make it easier to provide amenities for employees and permit a public entity to oversee a number of local services, Starbase general manager Kathy Lueders wrote in a letter last December. SpaceX currently handles those, including education and road management.

Some locals fear the move will give SpaceX more power across the Rio Grande Valley. They worry the approximately 280 people living in Starbase and eligible to vote will make decisions that affect a broad number of people nearby.

At Starbase on Thursday, there were few indications the vote was going on, beyond some signs pointing to a polling place within the facility. Workers going in and out of the site declined to comment on the election.

Musk telegraphed the idea years ago: “Creating the city of Starbase, Texas,” the executive said in a 2021 social-media post.

Company towns are ingrained in U.S. history but often considered relics of a bygone era, when powerful industrialists concentrated workforces near their businesses, in communities they controlled.

Railcar magnate George Pullman in the late 19th century built Pullman, Ill., south of what was then Chicago’s city limits. Sugar Land, near Houston, has roots in a company town centered on what was once a milling and refining operation for its namesake sweetener. U.S. Steel in 1906 established Gary, Ind., still home to its Gary Works operation.

Musk launched SpaceX more than two decades ago in the industrial suburbs of Los Angeles. He later made the Starbase site home for Starship, its still-experimental rocket designed for deep-space missions.

Along the way, SpaceX has transformed what was once a mostly empty corner of Texas’ Gulf Coast, surrounded by tidal flats, park land and a beach. In a legal filing last year, SpaceX said it was spending about $1.5 billion on Starbase and Starship annually.

The potential Starbase town would spread over multiple properties near a state highway and include roughly 247 lots with housing on them, according to a SpaceX affidavit. Only 10 of those lots aren’t owned by the company.

At one part of the complex, SpaceX installed a sign that lights up at night: “Gateway to Mars.”

Tension and Support

Some area residents have decried how one of the last relatively undeveloped stretches near the gulf is now dominated by rocket production, fiery engine tests and earthshaking launches.

Activists claim the company isn’t a good steward of the local environment, while road and beach closures prompted by Starship operations have sparked frustration and a lawsuit.

Homer Pompa has lived in the area for decades, but said he decided against voting in the election. Near his trailer on land abutting the Rio Grande, sleek new homes are going up.

“What would I vote for when I have ill feelings, when it’s something I didn’t want?” Pompa said. “I was here first.”

State legislators have proposed giving Starbase, assuming it incorporates as a town, powers to temporarily close beaches during weekdays. SpaceX has worked with county officials to keep the public off the beach during rocket operations.

Rene Medrano, a retired educator and lifelong Brownsville resident, is worried the beach will be harder to get to if Starbase is incorporated. “The people that want to visit the beach and enjoy their time at the beach need to be able to have that equal opportunity,” Medrano said.

Executives say the company is committed to the environment, and pointed to the economic opportunities Starbase has generated for the region. The surrounding Rio Grande Valley has historically ranked among the country’s poorest areas, with an economy traditionally driven by agriculture.

Elected officials across the valley are eager for residents to access training and positions contributing to humanity’s efforts to reach another planet.

The facility has drawn global attention to Brownsville, about 20 miles west of the SpaceX complex, generating thousands of local jobs, Brownsville Mayor John Cowen said. It has boosted demand for skilled labor and wages for lower-income households, he added.

“I realize that people feel left out of that growth and our job is to provide opportunities,” Cowen said. But Brownsville is “finally making a lot of headway breaking the cycle of poverty in our community.”

Governing Starbase

Bobby Peden, who lists his job on LinkedIn as SpaceX vice president of Texas test and launch, is standing for mayor of Starbase, according to a sample ballot. He couldn’t be reached to comment.

Jordan Buss, a SpaceX employee focused on environmental and health issues at Starbase, and Jenna Petrzelka, who has had several jobs at the company over the years, are candidates for the proposed town’s two commissioner positions. They didn’t respond to requests for comment.

An incorporated Starbase would have to follow municipal practices required by law, such as conducting open meetings and archiving records, said Alan Bojorquez, managing partner of an Austin-based law firm specializing in Texas municipal issues.

Beyond that, Texas state law requires very little of towns that incorporate, he said. A Starbase municipality would gain the ability to raise revenue, pursue property through eminent domain and borrow money.

Texas state law requires local elected officials to abstain from voting on matters involving a business, under certain circumstances, if at least 10% of their gross income the prior year came from the company, or if they own $15,000 or more of its fair-market value. SpaceX for years has used stock-based compensation as a major part of its pay packages.

Maria Pointer once lived near the area that is now Starbase and still owns a roughly half-acre property within the proposed town’s limits. She sells tickets to let people watch Starship launches from the property and worries that leaders of a Starbase town could squeeze her out.

“They can do anything they want,” Pointer said. “It’s going to be a company town.”