SpaceX Starship Hopper test vehicle under construction near Boca Chica, Texas.
Photographer: Austin Barnard / Bloomberg
Photographer: Austin Barnard / Bloomberg
Elon Musk pursues name change for Boca Chica, Texas, Gulf Coast community Space Exploration Technologies Corp. he builds his futuristic rocket in deep space.
“Creating Starbase, Texas,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “From there to Mars, and from here the Stars.”
A SpaceX representative recently conducted an “occasional investigation” into the requirements to incorporate Boca Chica and rename it Starbase, Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino said. In a statement, he said county commissioners were notified of talks about Boca Chica, a small town near the Mexican border, where new prototypes of the SpaceX spacecraft dominate the coastal horizon.
“Sending a tweet doesn’t do that,” Trevino said in an interview. “They have a lot of circles and obstacles that they have to go through before they can do that.”
The renaming of Boca Chica would further deepen Musk’s mark in Texas. In addition to SpaceX, its automaker, Tesla Inc. is building a massive factory in East Austin for its future electric van. The Musk Private Foundation moved to Austin, California, and Musk himself said he moved to Texas, although he still spends time in Golden State.
SpaceX is also testing missiles in McGregor, Texas, near Waco. The Starship prototypes they are developing in Boca Chica are one day meant to fly humans to the moon and Mars.
Separately, SpaceX posted engineering positions at Starlink for “a new state-of-the-art production facility” that it is building in Austin. Starlink is the company’s space internet service, which is available in parts of Canada, the US and the UK, television station Austin KXAN reported earlier about the new jobs.
As for Boca Chica, the incorporation process is managed in accordance with Texas law by Cameron County Commissioners. This process would also include utilities in the city, which does not have a public water system. The water is transported by truck near Brownsville and stored in tanks at every home.
An Austin lobbyist for SpaceX sent all calls to the company, which did not respond to requests for comment.
Judge Trevino added: “I think it might be a little ahead of them.”
– With the assistance of Joe Carroll and Dana Hull
(Updates with the county statement in the third paragraph)