Local voters approve establishing the town of Starbase at Boca Chica
By a vote of 212 to 6 (out of about 300 eligible voters), the residents at the previously unincorporated coastal land strip at Boca Chica have approved a proposal to create the town of Starbase, with a mayor and two city commissioners.
The three candidates were all running unopposed for those positions. All three either work at SpaceX now, have worked there in the past, or have relatives employed by the company.
The mayor will be Robert “Bobby” Peden, 36. He has worked for SpaceX for the past dozen years, first at its MacGregor engine test site and now at Starbase as a vice president of test and launch. The two council members are Jenna Petrzelka and Jordan Buss. Petrzelka, 39, worked for SpaceX from 2012 to 2024 as an engineer. Her husband, Joe Petrzelka, is presently a SpaceX vice president. Buss, 40, started working for SpaceX in 2023 as a senior director of environmental health and safety.
The vote shifts much of the civil management away from the larger local county to the residence who live in the town itself. It is quite evident they will establish this city with the needs of SpaceX in mind. It also appears that the residents are fully in support of this.
As for launches here, I will still refer to it as Boca Chica. The town might be named Starbase, but the actual location is still Boca Chica.
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By a vote of 212 to 6 (out of about 300 eligible voters), the residents at the previously unincorporated coastal land strip at Boca Chica have approved a proposal to create the town of Starbase, with a mayor and two city commissioners.
The three candidates were all running unopposed for those positions. All three either work at SpaceX now, have worked there in the past, or have relatives employed by the company.
The mayor will be Robert “Bobby” Peden, 36. He has worked for SpaceX for the past dozen years, first at its MacGregor engine test site and now at Starbase as a vice president of test and launch. The two council members are Jenna Petrzelka and Jordan Buss. Petrzelka, 39, worked for SpaceX from 2012 to 2024 as an engineer. Her husband, Joe Petrzelka, is presently a SpaceX vice president. Buss, 40, started working for SpaceX in 2023 as a senior director of environmental health and safety.
The vote shifts much of the civil management away from the larger local county to the residence who live in the town itself. It is quite evident they will establish this city with the needs of SpaceX in mind. It also appears that the residents are fully in support of this.
As for launches here, I will still refer to it as Boca Chica. The town might be named Starbase, but the actual location is still Boca Chica.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Several footnotes to this article:
1. As I wrote here, after walking within 750 feet of Flight Test 1 stack the day before the launch, I urge you to go there if you have a desire. It is changing fast. Already there are more walls and barriers to obstruct your view. The ability to walk (legally) to within 10 feet of the Rocket Garden has vanished. This is not a complaint, it is something that has to be done but it was amazing to see the sights we saw. It will be gone soon, I think.
2. The Texas state legislature has stepped in to limit the city of Starbase from unilaterally closing Boca Chica beach road. Still trying to understand what the limitation is, I think it limits the number of closures in some relationship with FAA limits on flights. Not sure.
Lots of blovating from leftists in Texas about “theft of democracy”. One State Rep has declared this is the hallmark reason that Texas must “Go Blue” to prevent the Lone Star state from being turned into an oligarchy. Don’t know that this will be the reason but Texas is slowly but surely turning to the blue side as more from NY, CA, CO, OR, etc flood in.
I refuse to subscribe to the defeatist attitude that TX is inevitably going blue. I think that one thing that will stave that off for some time yet is an incursion of red into deep south TX. But, anyways….
Starbase, the Company Town? :)
Thomas P McGuinness,
Texas used to be blue. Democrats made their usual mess of things and Republicans in Texas – who are not the hapless establishment types who have control of the party apparatus in CA – made a concerted effort and pushed Dems out of statewide offices and out of majorities in the state legislature. This change was aided by an influx of people fleeing CA and other blue states. And they did bring their politics with them, but those were red politics, not blue ones. Now that Trump has made it not only possible, but even fashionable, for non-Cuban latinos to be Republicans, and the growth of manufacturing in TX – to which Elon Musk has massively contributed – has drawn in blue-collar workers from the entire nation, the prosperity thus generated has turned formerly solidly blue, but chronically poor, parts of TX, like Starbase’s Cameron County, purple or even outright red.
There are certainly lefty Californians leaving the state, but they tend to go to other blue states, notably Oregon, Washington and Colorado.
More yellow dog originally…
What was the history of the location–didn’t Beal have a filament winder there?
This whole closing of the beach and roads problem is not a problem.’
‘
Build a road around the danger area and let the locals close the beach during the danger times.
One hour per launch is no problem. Who will be on the beach after dark, after midnight? Have you ever been on an ocean beach after midnight? Its really not that romantic, in fact its quite buggy and mostly cold.
Jeff Wright,
Beal’s TX footprint was at McGregor, which he built as a testing/manufacturing site. Elon bought it, early on, for the same purposes and has expanded it considerably. If there was ever a filament winder, it was probably there. And, like the even bigger one SpaceX was initially playing with in San Pedro, pre-stainless steel Starship, it has most probably long since been scrapped.