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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.