Elon Musk’s Starbase is trying to become a real city
One of Elon Musk’s company towns is hoping to make things official.
Starbase, a community near Brownsville, Texas, which has a SpaceX rocket launch site and where many employees and their families live, is hoping to incorporate as a town, according to a SpaceX letter to a county judge shared on X by a reporter for the local Monitor newspaper, Dina Arévalo.
“Incorporating Starbase will 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,” the document reads.
🚨BREAKING: Today @SpaceX filed a petition w/ Cameron Co @JudgeTrevino asking for special election to decide if Starbase can incorporate as a municipality.
— Dina Arévalo (@PhotogDina) December 12, 2024
“To continue growing the workforce necessary to…manufacture Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community.” pic.twitter.com/Wy6ryqbFq1
Musk’s other company town, Snailbrook, which is located 40 minutes outside Austin, 30 minutes from Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory, and houses facilities for SpaceX, Boring Company, and X, is a lot less far along. When we visited this fall, the town was mostly just an uninsulated bodega, a smaller-than-planned school, and about 15 trailers, rather than the 110 originally planned homes.