At the end of 2018, a local resident of Boca Chica shared an image of a new structure at the SpaceX site. Most people assumed that this was nothing more than a new water tower. But after rounds of speculation, SpaceX revealed that this structure was actually the beginnings of Starship.

At the time, SpaceX’s activity down in Boca Chica was extremely quiet. Their entire facility consisted of a small tent at the build site and a pile of dirt at the launch site. There were only a handful of workers and no one really knew how important Boca Chica would be for Starship’s development. After all, most people were expecting Starship to be manufactured in California, where most of the SpaceX engineers lived and worked.

Why SpaceX chose Boca Chica

So why did SpaceX choose Boca Chica as the base for their Starship project? Despite the lack of basic infrastructure or a skilled workforce, Boca Chica offered an abundance of cheap land in an area that was mostly uninhabited. It’s also right next to the sea, meaning rockets can be launched without immediately flying over people. To add to that, it’s about as close to the equator that you can possibly get in the US. This is a big advantage for rockets since they can gain extra velocity from the Earth’s faster spin at the equator. And so, picking the right place to start building Starship was very important.

This was extremely important for SpaceX since testing rockets on this scale would pose quite a risk to any nearby residents. But Boca Chica wasn’t completely uninhabited. Right next to the build site was the main village, which consisted of 35 houses. This spot was a dream location for retirees and vacationers, but SpaceX was about to change that. In order to make the area completely uninhabited, SpaceX started buying out the residents of Boca Chica.

Over the next couple of years, SpaceX purchased more and more land and hired hundreds of workers to begin a 24/7 work cycle. To this day, the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica continues to grow, with new plans to expand the launch site and add on additional launch mounts and landing pads. But the goal here isn’t just to create an enormous Starship factory. SpaceX wants to build an entire city, and call it ‘Starbase’.

Although Boca Chica is a great place for launching and landing rockets, it isn’t exactly well known for its skilled aerospace engineers. Right now, the Boca Chica site consists of some local workers and SpaceX employees that fly in from California. Many of these workers are on 6 month contracts and shift in and out from SpaceX’s main facilities in Hawthorne and McGregor, Texas.

For all of these employees, SpaceX has to spend an enormous amount of money on travel and accommodation costs. For their headquarters in California, they have the world’s brightest minds at their doorstep. Over the last two decades, this has allowed SpaceX to build the most incredible team of engineers and technicians.

For many young engineers, working at SpaceX is the dream job. But in order to attract the brightest minds to Boca Chica, SpaceX needs to make the area much more appealing.

Attracting the best employees to Boca Chica

In order for Starbase to be a nice place to live, the city needs to have all of the amenities you would typically find in a city. It needs to be a warm and homely place so that the families of the workers will also be happy to move there. Last year, SpaceX started building a restaurant and a tiki bar right next to the build site where employees can relax after a long day of work. 

Can we all just stop and admire for a second that @SpaceX has a Tiki Bar that has MK1’s flaps ? I’m sorry, but that’s the coolest thing ever. Fun to imagine that this place could be packed someday with people getting ready to go to Mars ? pic.twitter.com/gMsRYOSdsF— Everyday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) January 9, 2021

This restaurant features an outdoor seating area with a large roof made from old Starship flaps, a constant reminder of what they are working on. Many of these projects fall under the guidance of a new job which opened up last year, a Resort Development Manager. This job will likely involve designing and planning facilities for their future spaceport.

This will be a glamorous resort for the high paying customers that they expect to have for their first flights into space. But realistically, space tourism is only a small part of what Starbase is about. Unless they can attract the workers, none of this will happen.

One of the more unique features of Starbase will be the futuristic bar placed at the top of the high bay. This 80 meter tall building has a large gantry crane which is used to stack large sections of Starship.

The bar will be placed right above this area, with glass windows and a 360 degree view looking out over Starbase. Parts of the floor will also be made of glass, so employees and visitors can look down into the high bay and observe the work being done on Starships. In the future, SpaceX plans to open this bar up to the public. But for now, these areas are only open to SpaceX employees.

But where do most of these employees actually live? Just 200 meters away from the high bay is a small campsite, home to over 30 Airstream trailers. These retro styled trailers have onboard kitchens and sleeping spaces for up to 8 people.

Where the employees live

Although it seems like an efficient use of space, each trailer can cost between 50 and $100,000. For that amount of money, you could get an entire property in the Boca Chica village. But that’s exactly what SpaceX have done. After buying out most of the remaining villagers, SpaceX employees moved into these homes and started renovating them until they felt more like home.

The future of Starbase

It’s expected that the population of Starbase will grow by several thousand in just the next two years, so many more homes will need to be built in the area. So it’s clear that Starbase will be more than just a rocket factory or a resort for space tourists. But how big will Starbase actually be and what do SpaceX need to do in order to start a city?

According to Elon Musk, Starbase will cover a much wider area than Boca Chica. It’s likely that the unused land between Boca Chica and the nearest city of Brownsville will become part of Stabase. Right now, Boca Chica is known as an unincorporated village. This basically means that no corporation is there to provide services like law enforcement, fire departments and building maintenance.

Starbase becoming a real city

In order for an area to become incorporated, a petition has to be started with the local county and the details need to be approved by the local residents. In this instance, the majority of the residents are now SpaceX employees, which might make this process a little bit easier. But seeking incorporation is a complex process and one that is especially rare for this county, with the most recent case being in 1995. But SpaceX’s grand plans for Starbase have affected areas outside of the Boca Chica village.

The nearby city of Brownsville – where many employees come from – has seen a drastic change in just the last couple of years. As soon as SpaceX rolled into town, the state of Texas gave Brownsville millions of dollars in public relief, with the aim to improve the appearance of the city. Elon Musk himself has donated over $30 million to the Brownsville area.

Now that the plans for Starbase are out in the open, many residents of Brownsville are sensing the opportunities and investing in new businesses. But for many of the locals, they don’t see it that way. Brownsville is one of the poorest cities in the country, with many residents living in poverty.

Although many locals with businesses such as restaurants, shops and hotels stand to benefit from SpaceX’s arrival, those without businesses will suffer as the economy grows and taxes start to increase. For this reason, many of the locals are completely against the idea of Starbase.

But either way, the incredible developments down in Boca Chica are mesmerizing to watch. It’s no doubt that SpaceX has extremely grand plans for Starbase and the surrounding areas. Over the next decade, we should see one of the poorest parts of the country turn into a thriving industrial city with the hopes of becoming the gateway to Mars. It will be a long and hard journey for everyone involved. But if the history of spaceflight is anything to go by, humanity will flourish with the untold advancements that Starbase will bring.

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