HOUSTON: Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s dream of gaining city status for his SpaceX spaceport in the southern US state of Texas became a reality on Saturday, when voters overwhelmingly backed turning his Starbase into a new municipality.

The ballot, which also named a senior SpaceX representative as its mayor with 100 percent of the early vote, was never really in doubt. Most of the 283 eligible voters were SpaceX employees at the site on Boca Chica Bay bordering Mexico, or had connections to the company, whose billionaire chief has long eyed a human mission to Mars.

“Starbase, Texas,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X, “Is now a real city!” His post came after polls closed and unofficial results published by Cameron County showed an unambiguous 97.7 percent backing the project.

Musk himself is registered to vote, Cameron County Election Coordinator Remi Garza said, but the South African-born embattled 53-year-old had yet to cast his ballot when the early voting period closed on April 29.

Official documents show that nearly 500 people live around the base in Cameron County, on land mostly owned by SpaceX or its employees. The change allows Starbase to control building and permitting and avoid other regulatory hurdles, while collecting taxes and writing local law.

The vote came at a difficult time for Musk, who is expected to reduce his role as the unofficial head of US President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting “Department of Government Efficiency” to instead focus more on his troubled car company, Tesla.

The early voting also confirmed as mayor Bobby Peden, who is vice president of testing and launches at SpaceX, according to LinkedIn. He was the only name on the ballot.

The Texas base launched in 2019 and is a key testing site for the company’s rocket launches. Not everyone had been upbeat about the prospect of a SpaceX town.

Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, earlier voiced concern over the environmental impact, warning of more “destruction.” “They would attempt more illegal dumping, they would build up their dangerous rocket operations and cause more seismic activity, cause our homes to shake, and that they would destroy more of the wildlife habitat in the region,” she said before election day.

Environmental concerns

It was Musk himself who proposed the name Starbase in a social media post during a visit to the facility four years ago. Then, last December, general manager of SpaceX Kathryn Lueders appealed to local authorities to grant the site city status.

Lueders argued in her letter that SpaceX already maintained infrastructure there like roads, education services and medical care.

She promised the creation of the new city would not undermine SpaceX efforts to mitigate the base’s environmental impact. The hub overlooks the Gulf of Mexico — renamed the Gulf of America by Trump — and there is controversy over access to Boca Chica Beach.

A Texas House State Affairs committee rejected a bill this week by Republican lawmakers that would have given coastal cities with spaceports control over beach access.

Hinojosa, the activist, said SpaceX has limited access to Boca Chica Beach for many years and said she worried the vote could cut access entirely to a beach “our families have been going to for generations.” The Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, descendants of an Indigenous tribe in the area, has also complained.

In 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency and Texas authorities found that SpaceX was responsible for repeated spills and releasing pollutants into Texas waterways. In response to reports that its rockets had caused damage to wild bird nests, Musk quipped on social media: “To make up for this heinous crime, I will refrain from having omelette for a week.”

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2025