Musk's SpaceX prepares to launch Starbase, its own town in Texas

The Starbase site is home to Starship, SpaceX's still-experimental rocket designed for deep-space missions

- Micah Maidenberg & Harriet Torry

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.

Lone Star State to Red Planet