What is Starbase and who will run it? Elon Musk's new city in Texas explained

Tech mogul Elon Musk's long-standing vision of creating a futuristic city dedicated to space exploration is now a reality. On Saturday, voters in a small patch of south Texas voted to give Elon Musk a town to call his own, officially creating a new city called Starbase in the area where Musk’s SpaceX holds rocket launches. The voters overwhelmingly backed turning his Starbase into a new municipality.

"Starbase, Texas," Musk wrote on his social media platform X, "Is now a real city!" His post came after polls closed and unofficial results published by Cameron County showed an unambiguous 97.7 percent backing the project. The area surrounds the SpaceX facility in the region and most of these residents are SpaceX employees.

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What is a Starbase?

Starbase is the newest ‘city’ in Texas, coming up in the area where Elon Musk-owned SpaceX operates. Essentially, it is the latest company town.A company town by definition is a township where a single company employs most of the residents and owns the majority of the housing and stores.

The area surrounding the SpaceX facility is largely occupied by company operations, with most Starbase residents being SpaceX employees. This region also hosts the launch site for SpaceX’s Starship system. Over the past decade, SpaceX has made significant investments in the area, developing an advanced spaceflight infrastructure capable of supporting suborbital test flights and future missions to Mars.

Official documents show that nearly 500 people live around the base in Cameron County, on land mostly owned by SpaceX or its employees. The change allows Starbase to control building and permitting and avoid other regulatory hurdles, while collecting taxes and writing local law.

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The vote came at a difficult time for Musk, who is expected to reduce his role as the unofficial head of US President Donald Trump's cost-cutting "Department of Government Efficiency" to instead focus more on his troubled car company, Tesla.

Starbase is the new name for what was previously Boca Chica Village, a , a 1.5-square-mile patch of coastal land near the US-Mexico border, crisscrossed with trailers, hangars, and high-tech equipment. It has served as SpaceX’s principal launch facility for Starship, a rocket designed for deep-space missions under contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense.

According to a report in NBC, company already manages key services in the area, including roads, utilities, schooling, and medical care for its workers. In 2024, SpaceX’s general manager Kathryn Lueders wrote to local officials requesting a vote to formally establish the city, citing a need to “grow Starbase as a community.”

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Who will run Starbase?

The new city covers about 1.6 sq miles (3.9 sq km) that was sparsely populated before SpaceX began buying land in the area in 2012. The city's government will comprise of a mayor and two commissioners who will have power over planning, taxation and other local issues.

The commissioners include Jenna Petrzelka, a former operations engineering manager at Starbase and self-proclaimed philanthropist, and Jordan Buss, currently serving as the senior director of Environmental Health and Safety at SpaceX.

The campaign remained low-profile, with no public events, websites, or yard signs. Each candidate pledged to cap political contributions at $1,110. The vote to incorporate the new city was supported by nearly 300 eligible residents—most of whom work for SpaceX.

All three elected officials either currently live or have ties to Boca Chica Village, the area now known as Starbase. The city’s creation is seen as a major step in Elon Musk’s long-term vision for expanding SpaceX operations in South Texas.

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Why Texas?

Elon Musk’s footprint in Texas has steadily expanded over the past decade. In 2014, after evaluating multiple locations, SpaceX selected Cameron County for its launch site—attracted by its proximity to the equator, sparse population, and advantageous tax incentives. As Politico reported, local leaders granted SpaceX a 10-year property tax exemption in hopes of spurring economic development in one of Texas’s most economically challenged areas.

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Since then, the relationship has grown more complex. Although SpaceX has created jobs and brought significant investment, it has also generated controversy. Residents of nearby Brownsville have voiced concerns over rising housing costs and limited access to beaches during rocket launches.

Environmental and community groups, such as the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, have protested what they view as increasing corporate influence and ecological risks. Today, Starbase in South Texas has begun to resemble a modern-day “company town,” with SpaceX employees even occupying key roles in local government.