Voters in South Texas, who mostly work for Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, have approved the decision to annex the new city of Starbase, located in Cameron County near the Boca Chica Beach spaceport on the Gulf of Mexico, to the state of Texas. The final vote was 212-6 in favor of the decision, the Associated Press reports.
The election followed a petition that garnered enough signatures by February to hold a vote in which, according to The Texas Tribune, only 283 people were eligible to participate. Last week, an analysis by The Texas Newsroom, a citizen journalism organization, found that three of the five people were SpaceX employees, and according to The Tribune, the city will be led by three people with ties to SpaceX.
Musk, who first wrote about founding the company’s own city in 2021, announced the victory in a post on X before the votes were counted last night, saying: “Starbase is now officially a city.” He first wrote about the idea of creating a city in 2021.
Once the measure is approved, SpaceX will have more control over the launch site. As the Tribune notes, the company must get permission from Cameron County officials to close Boca Chica Beach for launches, but Texas Senate Bill 2188 could change that. The bill does not mention Starbase, which was not a city when it was written, but it would give the authority to approve beach closures to a municipality that meets certain conditions, including containing a “spaceport” and existing within a county that “borders the Gulf of Mexico or its intertidal limits.”
As this bill moves through the state legislature, the federal government appears to be losing its ability to rein in SpaceX. Musk’s DOGE has been working under President Donald Trump to obstruct federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Aviation Administration, whose regulatory authority the billionaire’s company falls under.
