Overwhelming majority of people who voted to turn base into municipality are employees of Elon Musk’s space company.
A community in the southern US state of Texas that is home to tech billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX will be renamed Starbase after residents – nearly all employees of the firm – backed the move to formally organise it into a city.
In a vote on Saturday, 212 of the almost 300 residents eligible to cast ballots were in favour of the change at the site on Boca Chica Bay bordering Mexico, with only six against.
Bobby Peden, who is vice president of testing and launches at SpaceX, was also confirmed as mayor. He was the only name on the ballot.
Official documents show nearly 500 people live around the base in Cameron County, on land mostly owned by SpaceX or its employees.
“Starbase, Texas,” Musk wrote on X, a social media platform he owns, “Is now a real city!”
The vote came at a difficult time for Musk, a major donor to US President Donald Trump and a backer of European far-right groups. The South African-born entrepreneur is expected to reduce his role as the unofficial head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to instead focus more on his troubled electric car company, Tesla.
It was Musk who proposed the name Starbase in a social media post during a visit to the facility – a key testing location for the company’s rocket launches – four years ago. Then, last December, general manager of SpaceX Kathryn Lueders appealed to local authorities to grant municipality status to the site.
Saturday’s vote was never in doubt, but the change allows Starbase to control building and permitting and avoid other regulatory hurdles, while collecting taxes and writing local law.
However, not everyone has been upbeat about the prospect of a SpaceX town.
Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, was among those voicing 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 told the AFP news agency before election day.
Some reports in 2024 had also said SpaceX’s rockets had caused damage to wild bird nests. In response, Musk had said on social media at the time: “To make up for this heinous crime, I will refrain from having omelette for a week.”
Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency and Texas authorities also found that SpaceX was responsible for repeated spills and the release of pollutants into Texas waterways.
Lueders argued in her letter in December that SpaceX already maintained infrastructure such as roads, education services and medical care at the site.
She promised the creation of the new city would not undermine the company’s efforts to mitigate the base’s environmental impact.