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Voters in a small patch of south Texas are casting their ballots on Saturday in an election that could give Elon Musk a town to call his own. The vote would officially create a new city called Starbase in the area where Musk’s SpaceX holds its Texas rocket launches.
A couple of hundred residents of what was previously known as Boca Chica will decide whether to make their unincorporated neighborhoods into a town that would grant them the authority to pass city ordinances. The outcome, which will be decided almost entirely by SpaceX employees and their families, who make up the majority of the local population, is nearly guaranteed to result in incorporation.
The creation of Starbase would put Musk in the unusual position of holding sway over a company town, a distinction that has more in common with Gilded Age industrialists than most modern US businesses. It would be a small victory for the world’s richest man as he pivots away from his job as de facto leader of the “department of government efficiency” – a role that has elicited furious backlash and hurt his public image as well as his businesses.
Much like with Doge, Musk will not officially be in charge of Starbase. The entirety of the future city revolves around SpaceX, however, and it is almost entirely made up of the company’s employees and their kin. The Starbase population, as of 2025, is a little over 500 people, some 260 of which are SpaceX employees. The others are mostly family members of workers, according to Bloomberg.
The town’s proposed mayor, 36-year-old Bobby Peden, has worked at SpaceX since 2013 and is vice-president of test and launch operations in Texas. Peden, along with two other city commissioner candidates who are also SpaceX employees, are all running unopposed.
Starbase sits on a tiny piece of land near the Mexican border on a small bay that feeds into the Gulf of Mexico. Prefabricated houses, airstreams and palm trees line the streets. An imperious golden bust of Musk stands nine feet tall outside the town. A plaque on its pedestal reads “ELON aka Memelord”.
Last month, vandals defaced the statue by peeling off layers of foam and fiberglass from its cheeks. There is an employee-only restaurant called Astropub with a neon red “Occupy Mars” sign behind the bar. One of the main boulevards is called “Memes Street”.
Although creating Starbase is likely somewhat of a vanity project, one which Musk has been touting for years, it does grant the potential city and its SpaceX leadership powers over what to do with the land. Company workers submitted identical statements to a legislative hearing in April arguing that creating the town would help with logistics and coordination around issues such as road closures during test launches, the Associated Press reported.
Opposing Starbase
Even though the incorporation of Starbase is extremely likely, given who can vote in the election, it has also faced protests and pushback from others in the area. The South Texas Environmental Justice Network activist group has been holding protests and urging Texans to email their state representatives to oppose the incorporation. The group argues that creating Starbase will allow SpaceX to close access to the public beach in the town whenever it wants and block others from using the public land.
“Boca Chica Beach is meant for the people, not Elon Musk to control,” the organization said in a statement on its site. “For generations, residents have visited Boca Chica beach for fishing, swimming, recreation, and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe has spiritual ties to the beach. They should be able to keep access.”
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Musk has in previous years made grand pronouncements about the future of Starbase while urging employees to move to the town. “Starbase will grow by several thousand people over the next year or two,” he posted on Twitter in 2021.
SpaceX has become an increasingly valuable part of Musk’s empire as Tesla’s performance has tanked and the government has turned to SpaceX for billions of dollars in contracts related to space travel.
Musk has relocated his primary residence and businesses to Texas in recent years. He lives in a $35m sprawling compound in Austin that houses three separate mansions. During his backing of Trump’s re-election last year, he temporarily uprooted and moved to the swing state of Pennsylvania.
Musk then took up residence in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building while serving as senior adviser to Donald Trump, but left the White House in late April as he shifts back to overseeing his companies.
