South Texas booming due to arrival of SpaceX
Link here. The article details the major tourism and industry dollars that have come into existence in the Brownsville region since SpaceX established its Boca Chica launch facility, including major development now underway to cater to the tourist business of travelers eager to get a close look at a Starship/Superheavy launch.
The article gives a sense of the reality on the ground. While the anti-Musk activist groups sue SpaceX in their attempt to shut down Starship/Superheavy development, claiming it is harming the region, stories like this put the lie to those claims.
Hat tip to Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.
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Link here. The article details the major tourism and industry dollars that have come into existence in the Brownsville region since SpaceX established its Boca Chica launch facility, including major development now underway to cater to the tourist business of travelers eager to get a close look at a Starship/Superheavy launch.
The article gives a sense of the reality on the ground. While the anti-Musk activist groups sue SpaceX in their attempt to shut down Starship/Superheavy development, claiming it is harming the region, stories like this put the lie to those claims.
Hat tip to Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the 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. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
The “sellout” of the hotels on SPI was greatly helped by the fact that Spring Break was in full gear that week. Not that there wasn’t a zillion people heading down to see the launch, as the hotel sellouts in neighboring areas show, but it was a contributing factor to be sure.
Luckily, my home is only a three-hour drive from SPI. Packing up the truck and heading down is not a problem, just so we arrive at Isla Blanca Park early enough to fit into a parking spot.
Hopefully, IFT-4 will be close enough to the One Year Anniversary that champagne will be in order!
Old song from the album “Minus Ten and Counting” (on Youtube).
Captures the spirit of those who want to personally witness history being made although a few words need changing now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3QeX5GDRaU
Then there is this awesome anthem for the workers at Boca Chica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZSTkunGczI
Turning “cold refin-ed steel into the dreams of spaceflight” indeed.
‘South Texas booming due to arrival of SpaceX”
I see what you did, there.
Blair,
I assume that headline alone with start and FAA and Fish & Wildlife investigation.
Mike,
I’ve still got a copy of the ‘Songs of the Space Age’ book Off Centaur Publications produced as a companion piece to the ‘Minus Ten and Counting’ album – bought at the 1982 LosCon. You’re right that Leslie Fish’s lyrics to ‘Witnesses’ Waltz’ need only quite minor tweaks to work perfectly for Texas Tank Watching. Mary Jean Holmes’s ‘Everyman’ works fine with no edits at all.
The only quibble I have with the presciently durable ‘Everyman’ is the notion that those who build the ships will never get to fly in them. I suspect more than a few of the SpaceX hardhats will finish their careers with time on-orbit or on the Moon or Mars in their logbooks. Settling the Moon and Mars is going to necessitate a lot of building of all sorts. Who better to do it than the people who built Starbase as a warm-up exercise?
Dick Eagleson, I have a copy also, bought along with the cassette tape in Melbourne, Australia around 1987 when there was a SF bookstore in one of the main streets in the CBD.
Leslie Fish’s “Sentries” should have been the Space Force anthem.
I hope at least some of folks building Starbase get to fly in space and walk on the Moon or Mars.
Some of those facilities used to be Beal’s, right?
That’s a story right there