Spanish
San Antonio (USA).- The area where the SpaceX base, the aerospace company of Elon Musk, is located has officially become a city called 'Starbase', despite the opposition of environmental groups.
Cameron County (Texas) officials on the U.S. southern border certified on Tuesday the results of local elections in early May where the yes vote won in favor of creating the new city.
"With a local government, we are excited to create the best city for our community," Starbase wrote on its account on the X platform, also owned by Musk, in reaction to the decision.
In the elections, only the 283 residents of Boca Chica Village, an unincorporated area of Cameron County where SpaceX workers mainly live, had the opportunity to vote. Most of them (212) voted in favor of creating the city of 'Starbase'.
In the elections, the vice president of SpaceX Launches, Bobby Peden, was also elected as mayor, and two other employees of Musk's company as commissioners, according to local media reports.
The creation of this new city gives Musk's company greater control over the area, near a reserve and national park and located on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, renamed by the president, Donald Trump, as the Gulf of America.
The magnate and key figure in the Trump administration has sought for years to get rid of the environmental and federal restrictions that regulate rocket launches from SpaceX.
With the support of the Republican Party of Texas, the state Senate approved a law that will allow authorities in the new city of Starbase to close a beach in Boca Chica, a power that belongs to the county.
Several environmental groups in the region have expressed their discontent with Starbase's activities, asserting that they threaten the indigenous population of the area and destroy "dozens of acres of natural habitat," according to a statement from the South Texas Environmental Justice Network.
Flights performed by SpaceX
In early May, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave SpaceX the green light to conduct up to 25 launches each year of its Starship rocket.
In total, SpaceX has carried out eight Starship test flights. During the last two, in January and March of this year, part of the rocket exploded and the debris fell in different places in the Caribbean.
You may be interested in: SpaceX confirms it lost its Starship rocket shortly after launch
In January, before Trump's inauguration, the FAA asked SpaceX to investigate the causes of the Starship explosion. The magnate then harshly criticized the agency, accusing it of overstepping its functions as a regulator.
Now, taking advantage of the influence he has within the Trump Administration, Musk has been in charge of imposing reprisals on the FAA, including a budget reduction and pressure for the agency to remove the barriers to his plans for SpaceX, according to an investigation by the American media outlet ProPublica.
