Elon Musk accused of ruining peaceful village

Locals of Elon Musk's "space city" have claimed that he wrecked their peaceful beach village.

Residents of Elon Musk’s “space city” in southeast Texas have reportedly complained about how the SpaceX CEO treated them as he turned their quiet beach town into his expansive Starbase concept.

Before SpaceX stepped in, Boca Chica was a little beachside community at the mouth of the Rio Grande on the border with Mexico with only a few streets. 

The company promised to transform the community into a terrestrial endpoint for space passengers.

Construction of the company’s launch facility began in 2014, and rocket testing there began in 2019.

A few residents reportedly held out as SpaceX progressively acquired the majority of the thirty-two residences in Boca Chica as construction on the project advanced.

“Creating the city of Starbase, Texas,” Musk tweeted in March 2021. 

According to Mary Helen Flores, a teacher from nearby Brownsville, who spoke to The Sunday Times, “It was a little neighborhood, and Elon Musk came and took it over. He renamed it Starbase without asking anyone. He just announced it on Twitter.”

The “final house in Texas” before the border, according to Maria Pointer, is now being used by SpaceX to store medical supplies, she told the newspaper.

According to The Sunday Times, Musk received applications from states and territories in 2012 that wanted to host a new SpaceX base, with Florida and Puerto Rico emerging as the two front-runners before deciding on Boca Chica.

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