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When Elon Musk first set his sights on South Texas for a new space operations base, he promised that SpaceX would build a small, environmentally friendly footprint and that the environment would remain “untouched”.
Ten years later, the reality is very different. An investigation by The New York Times shows how SpaceX’s rampant growth in the area has drastically altered the fragile landscape and threatened the habitat the U.S. government is there to protect.
There are likely to be more repercussions, in South Texas and other places where SpaceX is expanding. Mr. Musk has said he hopes to one day launch his Starships — the largest rocket ever produced — a thousand times a year.
SpaceX executives repeatedly declined to comment. But Gary Henry, who until this year served as a SpaceX adviser on the Pentagon’s launch programs, said the company was aware of concerns about SpaceX’s impact on the environment and was working to address them.
These are four conclusions from our research:
Musk used protected areas as a buffer for SpaceX operations
Rocket launch sites in the US, such as Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and Kennedy Space Center in Florida, are typically huge, secure facilities covering tens of thousands of acres.
Mr. Musk didn’t intend to buy that much land when he looked at the area near Brownsville, Texas. Instead, he wanted to buy a small piece of land in the middle of public lands — what the team involved called a “donut hole.” He thought the surrounding state parks and federal wildlife refuges would serve as natural buffers.
But there was a flaw in that plan. There were several occupied homes in Boca Chica Village, adjacent to the planned launch site, and there were frequent visitors to the state park. These people would have to be evacuated every time a launch was planned.
Even more troubling, the planned launch site was next to one of the most important migratory bird habitats in North America. And nearby Boca Chica Beach serves as a breeding ground for Kemp’s ridleys, the world’s most endangered species of sea turtles.
Musk misled officials about his plans for the area
Mr. Musk and SpaceX initially told local officials that the company’s impact on the region would be modest. The development would bring a few hundred jobs to the area through an investment of about $50 million.
Company officials also told the Federal Aviation Administration, SpaceX’s primary regulator, that they planned to launch their Falcon rockets from the area. The Falcons are the company’s workhorse rockets, used primarily to launch satellites into space.
Mr. Musk has pursued a very different plan. Investment in SpaceX operations, including a rocket factory, now totals $3 billion. A second launch pad is under construction. The industrial growth has caused so much congestion along the tiny two-lane road into Boca Chica that some of the now 3,400 SpaceX employees and contractors commute to work by hovercraft.
SpaceX also began testing Starship, a rocket that will launch the largest version of the Falcon and weighs nearly four times as much. When Starship test flights began, Musk touted the progress as a step toward one day sending manned space flights to Mars. The FAA initially did not anticipate operations of this scale or a rocket with this capability.
Officials at the U.S. National Park Service also grew frustrated with SpaceX’s failed promises. The company agreed to certain conditions to limit its impact on the nearby Palmito Ranch Battlefield, the site of the last Civil War. But a now-retired park service official told The Times that SpaceX had violated several of those agreements. “We were misled,” the official said. Mark Spiersaid.
The public lands surrounding Starbase have been destroyed
In April 2023, SpaceX conducted its first full test launch of a Starship. However, the rocket malfunctioned and a self-destruct mechanism eventually caused it to explode. Steel plates, chunks of concrete, and shrapnel were hurled thousands of feet into the air, crashing into bird habitat and a nearby state park and beach. One chunk of concrete was found 2680 feet from launch site — well outside the zone where the FAA thought damage could occur.
That wasn’t the first or last time the protected areas were pelted with debris. Since 2019, SpaceX tests of Starship rockets or prototypes have resulted in at least 19 to burn, to leakexplosions or other problems related to the rapid growth of Musk’s complex in Boca Chica, which he calls Starbase.
Even the hovercraft that employees use to commute has caused some concern among officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife described in a letter to SpaceX as new threats to a “globally important area for wading birds.”
The environment played a subordinate role compared to SpaceX and America’s ambitions
Musk took advantage of the restrictions and competing missions of the various agencies that hindered Starbase’s expansion.
Those charged with protecting the area’s cultural and natural resources, particularly officials from the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service, have repeatedly lost out to more powerful agencies, including the FAA, whose goals are closely aligned with Musk’s.
The United States already relies heavily on SpaceX to launch its defense and commercial satellites into space. The Department of Defense and NASA both plan to carry cargo aboard the new Starship. NASA has a $2.9 billion contract to use the rocket to land astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
The FAA is charged with promoting safe space travel. And while it is required to conduct an environmental study of SpaceX’s operations, the agency acknowledges that protecting the environment is not its first priority.
“Blowing debris into state parks or national lands is not what we were calling for, but the bottom line is that no one was hurt,” said Kevin Coleman, the FAA’s top official who oversees space launch licensing. “We certainly don’t want people to feel like they’re being bulldozed. But it’s a very important operation that SpaceX is doing there. It’s very important to our civilian space program.”
