(The Hill) A community in Texas where a launch site for Elon Musk’s SpaceX company is located voted to incorporate as the city of Starbase on Saturday.
Residents of Cameron County, who are mostly SpaceX employees, voted in favor of the move in a 212-6 vote. Musk celebrated the vote in a post on his social media platform X, stating Starbase “is now a real city.”
Only 143 votes were needed to secure the incorporation of the city, which sits on the edge of the U.S.-Mexico southern border in the Rio Grande Valley.
“Becoming a city will help us continue building the best community possible for the men and women building the future of humanity’s place in space,” a page for the city posted on X.
Cameron County elections administrator Remi Garza said once the the election results are recognized by a county judge, Starbase will officially become a Texas municipality.
The Hill has reached out to SpaceX for comment.
The formation of the new city comes after Musk’s announcement last July that he planned to move the headquarters of SpaceX and X out of California after a bill regarding transgender students was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) into law.
SpaceX’s project began over a decade ago when the company started to purchase land in the area in 2012 and officially broke ground two years later when the legislature passed the bill allowing for an exception to the constitution’s Public Beach Access Act, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Some residents in the area initially opposed the tech billionaire’s effort.
“SpaceX bullied us from the beginning,” Celia Johnson told the Journal at the time. “SpaceX employees did what they wanted.”
Johnson, in 2021, claimed there were numerous attempts from the company to buy her home and those of others.
“We’ve got a lot of land with nobody around, so if it blows up, it’s cool,” Musk said of the area during a 2018 press conference, according to CBS.
Three years later, a test flight on March 30 did blow up near the Texas facility, sending debris flurrying. It took three months to clean up. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported numerous non-compliance issues with the company to the Federal Aviation Administration, according to CBS.
Sophia Vento contributed to this report.
