The Boca Chica area has seen various developments over the course of its history. These include Mexican land grants, Mexican and American ranches, a battlefield of the American Civil War, a 1920s beach resort, and a state park (Boca Chica State Park);[1] additionally, a small settlement named Boca Chica Village existed in the area from 1960 to 2020. In recent years, the area has become more widely known due to being the site of Starbase, a major facility of aerospace company SpaceX for the development, manufacturing and testing of its rockets.[2] Starbase is envisioned to one day serve as the primary launch and recovery facility for SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle.
Boca Chica means "small mouth of the river" in Spanish, as the Rio Grande's flow is modest, and in droughts, the mouth of the river may disappear altogether.[3]
The making of the area of Boca Chica
Transportation across Boca Chica has been an important part of the history of the area. A land transportation route existed across Boca Chica in the 19th century, starting at the Mexican port of Brazos Santiago, north of Boca Chica, and heading inland to the Rio Grande Valley area that would later become Brownsville. The shallow-water sail port at Brazos Santiago was used by sailing ships that used Brazos Santiago Pass to enter the South Bay of Laguna Madre—a shallow, hypersaline, natural bay—from the Gulf to transit goods to the mainland north of the Rio Grande.[4]:ch. 3 Historical artifacts of human usage from those eras remained as of 2013[update] illustrating road use during the Mexican–American War (circa 1846) and railroad use during the American Civil War. Two historical artifacts. Cypress pilings from a circa 1846 floating bridge and the "Palmetto Pilings" from a circa-1865 railroad bridge were both yet extant in 2013. Both are located within 0.5mi (0.80km) of the beach near the eastern terminus of Texas State Highway 4.[4]:3–38
In the late 19th century, much of the arable land on the subdelta peninsula of Boca Chica was used for ranching. Historical ranches include Tulosa Ranch, Palmito Ranch, White's Ranch, and Cobb's Ranch.[4]:3–39 No historical Native American usage is known, and consultation with a number of tribes in 2013 identified no verbal record of native use of the area.[4]:3–39
In 1904, the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway was completed to Brownsville, which "opened the area to northern farmers who began to come to the area at the turn of the 20th century. They cleared the land, built irrigation systems and roads, and introduced large-scale truck farming and citrus farming. The new farming endeavors began a new period of prosperity around Brownsville."[4]
The availability of cheap land in the area created a strong interest in land speculation. Special trains were dispatched to bring land speculators to the area and by the early 1920s as many as 200 people a day were coming to see the land.
One of the more notable land speculation ventures was the construction of the Del Mar Resort on Boca Chica Beach. Advertised as being on the same latitude as Miami, the resort was built in the 1920s by Colonel Sam Robinson, who moved to the Rio Grande Valley in 1917. The resort had 20 daycabins available for rent, a bathhouse, and a ballroom. It was quite successful resort until 1933, when a hurricane destroyed most of the buildings. The remaining buildings were turned into a base for the US Coast Guard during World War II. As a result of the Great Depression and the hurricane damage, the owners of the property were not able to reopen the resort after the end of the war.
The devastating 1933 hurricane spurred the Works Progress Administration to take part in the dredging and construction of the Port of Brownsville, a venture that the city had been trying to complete since 1928. The port was officially opened in 1936.[4]
During the years that the ship channel was under construction, a nationally known rocketplane entrepreneur, William Swan, disappeared over Boca Chica as he attempted a rocket-powered human flight in 1933. As part of a skydiving exhibition over the Del Mar Resort on Boca Chica, he jumped out of an airplane in "an attempted manned rocket backpack flight. He disappeared into the clouds and was never seen again."[5] Swan had previously set records in 1931 with the first American rocket-powered aircraft flight over Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the "first air-launched rocketplane flight" in 1932.[5]
The completion of the port and the dredging of the Brownsville Ship Channel created a new human-made northern boundary of the Boca Chica peninsula. It cut the peninsula off from any land transport routes except from Brownsville to the east, which was also the transportation railhead for Boca Chica to the rest of the country.[4]
The Battle of Palmito Ranch is considered by some as the final battle of the conclusion of the American Civil War. It was fought 12–13 May 1865, on the banks of the Rio Grande east of current Brownsville, Texas, and a few miles from the seaport of Los Brazos de Santiago.
Union and Confederate forces in southern Texas had been observing an unofficial truce since the beginning of 1865, but Union Colonel Theodore H. Barrett, newly assigned to command an all-black unit, and never having been in combat, ordered an attack on a Confederate camp near Fort Brown for unknown reasons. The Union attackers captured a few prisoners, but the following day, the attack was repulsed near Palmito Ranch by Colonel John Salmon Ford, and the battle resulted in a Union defeat. Union forces were surprised by artillery, said to have been supplied by the French Army occupying the nearby Mexican town of Matamoros.[6]
Boca Chica Beach
Boca Chica Beach is part of the 10,680-acre (43.2km2) Boca Chica tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The tract is a former Texas state park located in the Boca Chica Subdelta separated from Mexico by the Rio Grande. The park was acquired by the state of Texas and opened in May 1994. The state park land is now managed by the US federal government as part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.[1]
The portion of the beach north of the current Texas State Highway 4—on what was historically Brazos Island, but is now connected to the mainland—was known as Del Mar Beach prior to the second half of the 20th century.[5] This area was the location of the successful Del Mar Resort in the 1920s and early 1930s, which had 20 daycabins for rent along with a bathhouse and a ballroom.[4] Many of the resort buildings were destroyed by the 1933 hurricane.[7] Although the owners partially rebuilt and continued to operate during the 1930s, the remaining buildings were turned into a base for the US Coast Guard during World War II. As a result of the Great Depression and hurricane damage, the owners did not reopen the resort after the end of the war.[4]
An older map of Boca Chica[5] shows the existence of a ship passage—Boca Chica Pass—from the Gulf into the South Bay of the Laguna Madre, several miles south of Brazos Santiago Pass, just north of the current SpaceX orbital launch site. This was from the time when Brazos Island, the duned area east of South Bay, was an island separated from the mainland. From 1846 to 1879, the King & Kennedy Steamboat service made calls at a landing in the South Bay. For sometime in the 1900s, a road bridge, called the Boca Chica Pass Bridge, went over the pass to connect the road from Brownsville to Brazos Island.[5] Storm movement of sands and tidal flats, principally from the 1933 and 1967 hurricanes have closed off the pass and connected Brazos Island to the mainland, although water still exits the southeast end of South Bay and flows beside SH 4 into the Gulf under certain weather conditions, particularly extended days of southerly winds which build up the water level at the south end of the bay at high tide allowing limited flows of bay water back to the Gulf via the highway cut through the dunes.
Boca Chica Village is the name of a small unincorporated communityas of 2014[update] located on Texas State Highway 4, about 22mi (35km) east of Brownsville. It was formed in 1967 under another name as a land development project, and a community of about 30 ranch-style houses was built before the settlement was devastated by Hurricane Beulah later that same year, which greatly affected the progress of the would-be town.[8]
In 2014, the village and surrounding area were chosen by SpaceX as the location for the construction of a spaceflight build-and-launch facility.[8][9] Much of the SpaceX build facility is located on land that was previously a part of Boca Chica Village, while the SpaceX test and orbital launch facilities are located two miles further east, adjacent to Boca Chica Beach.
In 2012, SpaceX named the Boca Chica area as a possible location for the construction of their future private commercial launch site. In August 2014, SpaceX announced that they had selected the area as the location for their South Texas Launch Site, and that their "control center" would actually be on land within the Boca Chica Village, while the launch complex would be located two miles to the east. Limited construction began that year,[10][4] but more extensive construction activities did not begin until approximately 2018. By May 2018, the site was expected to be used exclusively for launches of the SpaceX second-generation fully-reusable launch vehicle (which was eventually named SpaceX Starship in late 2018), and the launch complex was no longer planned to become a third launch site for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.[11]
Flight testing of the Starship second stage, with the newly designed Raptor rocket engine, began in 2019 and has continued into 2023. With the village only a few miles from the test site, in August 2019, Cameron County officials—following requirements set by the US regulatory authority, the FAA—began to request village residents to go outside their homes during any tests that involve loading of propellant fuel, due to perceived danger from shock-wave induced broken windows in the event of an explosion.[12]
SpaceX made an initial orbital test flight of the entire two-stageStarship system in 2023. The first flight test flew on April 20, 2023, and ended after approximately two minutes when the Super Heavy booster lost control of its engines, while still over the designated flight test corridor.[13][14] The second flight lifted off the pad on November 18, 2023, and successfully achieved stage separation, though both the booster and ship were terminated later in the flight.[15][16][17]
Plans for a new city
As early as August 2020, SpaceX indicated it was looking to build a resort in South Texas with the intent to turn "Boca Chica into a '21st century Spaceport'".[18][19]
In March 2021, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk more formally announced plans to incorporate a new city in the area of Boca Chica to be called "Starbase, Texas". Starbase would include the existing Boca Chica Village, the SpaceX test site and launch site, and more of the surrounding Boca Chica area.[20][21] Starbase is expected to include the land in Boca Chica Village proper—where both the legacy residential community and the SpaceX build site are located—as well as the land where the SpaceX test site and launch site is located, and more since Starbase is to be a municipality "much larger than Boca Chica."[20]
By April 2021, SpaceX was referring to the area as "Starbase" on their test flight webcasts, and Musk was openly encouraging people to move to "Starbase".[22] and projected that the population could grow by several thousand people in the next several years.[23] Starbase had also become a common term for the area amongst SpaceX fans and followers.[24] As of April 2021, the company had not yet submitted the requisite paperwork to initiate the city formation process, and The Dallas Morning News reported that the "planning appears to be in the early stages".[25][needs update]
In January 2024, Cameron County and Brownsville officials both passed resolutions requesting the federal government to officially recognise "Starbase" as a place name.[26][27] In May 2024, Cameron County submitted a formal proposal to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which was publicly posted on their website in July 2024.[28] However, at the May 2024 meeting of the Board's Domestic Names Committee, doubts were expressed over whether the proposed name violates the Board's policy against recognising names intended to promote a commercial enterprise.[29]
Cameron County, officially the County of Cameron, is the southernmost county in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 421,017. Its county seat is Brownsville.
South Padre Island is a resort town in Cameron County, Texas, United States. It is part of the Brownsville–Harlingen Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,066 at the 2020 census. The town is located on South Padre Island, a barrier island with the Laguna Madre situated to the leeward of the island and the Gulf of Mexico on the windward flank, along the Texas Gulf Coast. South Padre Island is accessible via the Queen Isabella Causeway from the town of Port Isabel. South Padre Island is named after José Nicolás Ballí, a Catholic priest and settler.
Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launch service provider and satellite communications company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase near Brownsville, Texas after first being established in 2002 in Southern California, where it still has significant operations. The company was founded by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs by designing for reusability and ultimately developing a sustainable colony on Mars. SpaceX currently produces and operates the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets along with the Dragon spacecraft.
Vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) is a form of takeoff and landing for rockets. Multiple VTVL craft have flown. The most successful VTVL vehicle was the Apollo Lunar Module which delivered the first humans to the Moon. Building on the decades of development, SpaceX utilised the VTVL concept for its flagship Falcon 9 first stage, which has delivered over three hundred successful powered landings so far.
SpaceX has privately funded the development of orbital launch systems that can be reused many times, similar to the reusability of aircraft. SpaceX has developed technologies over the last decade to facilitate full and rapid reuse of space launch vehicles. The project's long-term objectives include returning a launch vehicle first stage to the launch site within minutes and to return a second stage to the launch pad, following orbital realignment with the launch site and atmospheric reentry in up to 24 hours. SpaceX's long term goal would have been reusability of both stages of their orbital launch vehicle, and the first stage would be designed to allow reuse a few hours after return. Development of reusable second stages for Falcon 9 was later abandoned in favor of developing Starship, however, SpaceX developed reusable payload fairings for the Falcon 9.
Starbase is an industrial complex for the build, test, and launch of Starship rockets as well as the headquarters of the American aerospace manufacturer company SpaceX. Located near Brownsville, Texas, United States, it has been under construction since the late 2010s by SpaceX. Starbase is composed of a spaceport near the Gulf of Mexico, a production facility at the Boca Chica village, and a test site along the Texas State Highway 4.
SpaceX Mars colonization program is a planned objective of the company SpaceX and particularly of its founder Elon Musk to colonize Mars. The main element of this ambition is the plan to establish a self-sustained large scale settlement and colony on Mars, claiming self-determination under direct democracy. The main motivation behind this is the belief that the colonization of Mars allows humanity to become multiplanetary and therefore secures the long-term survival of the human species in case of Earth being rid of human life.
As of 2023, SpaceX operates four launch facilities: Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), Vandenberg Space Force Base Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E), Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), and Brownsville South Texas Launch Site (Starbase). Space Launch Complex 40 was damaged in the AMOS-6 accident in September 2016 and repair work was completed by December 2017. SpaceX believes that they can optimize their launch operations, and reduce launch costs, by dividing their launch missions amongst these four launch facilities: LC-39A for NASA launches, SLC-40 for United States Space Force national security launches, SLC-4E for polar launches, and South Texas Launch Site for commercial launches.
Boca Chica Village or Kopernik Shores, formerly Kennedy Shores, is a small unincorporated community in Cameron County, Texas, United States. It was formed in the late 1960s, and is still extant as of 2021, although the village proper has changed greatly since 2018 as SpaceX came to purchase much of the land of the village. It lies 20 miles (32 km) east of the City of Brownsville on the Boca Chica peninsula, and forms part of the Brownsville–Harlingen–Raymondville and the Matamoros–Brownsville metropolitan areas. It is situated on Texas State Highway 4, immediately south of the South Bay lagoon, and is located about 2 mi (3.2 km) northwest of the mouth of the Rio Grande. Although the name Kopernik Shores is no longer in popular use, it remains its official name per the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, and is still occasionally used in official contexts.
STARGATE—Spacecraft Tracking and Astronomical Research into Gigahertz Astrophysical Transient Emission—is a radio-frequency (RF) technology facility which is located next to the SpaceX Starbase in south Texas.
Starship is a two-stage fully reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX. As of September 2024, it is the biggest and most powerful vehicle ever to fly. SpaceX has developed Starship with the intention of lowering launch costs using economies of scale. SpaceX aims to achieve this by reusing both rocket stages, increasing payload mass to orbit, returning both stages to be "caught" by the launch tower, increasing launch frequency, creating a mass-manufacturing pipeline and adapting it to a wide range of space missions. Starship is the latest project in SpaceX's reusable launch system development program and plan to colonize Mars.
Raptor is a family of rocket engines developed and manufactured by SpaceX. It is the third rocket engine in history designed with a full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) fuel cycle, and the first such engine to power a vehicle in flight. The engine is powered by cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen, a mixture known as methalox.
Starship flight test 1 was the maiden flight of the integrated SpaceX Starship launch vehicle. SpaceX performed the flight test on April 20, 2023. The prototype vehicle was destroyed less than four minutes after lifting off from the SpaceX Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. The vehicle became the most powerful rocket ever flown, breaking the half-century-old record held by the Soviet Union's N1 rocket. The launch was the first "integrated flight test," meaning it was the first time that both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft flew together as a fully integrated Starship launch vehicle.
Super Heavy is the first stage of the SpaceX Starship super heavy-lift launch vehicle, which it composes in combination with the Starship second-stage. As of September 2024, Block 1 Super Heavy vehicles have undergone flight testing. No hardware has been observed for the Block 2 Super Heavy vehicle. Super Heavy flew for the first time on April 20, 2023, during the first orbital launch attempt of the Starship rocket.
Starship is a spacecraft and second stage under development by American aerospace company SpaceX. Stacked atop its booster, the Super Heavy, the pair compose SpaceX's new super heavy-lift space vehicle, also called Starship. The spacecraft is designed to transport both crew and cargo to a variety of destinations, including Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars. It is intended to enable long duration interplanetary flights with a crew of up to 100 people. It will also be capable of point-to-point transport on Earth, enabling travel to anywhere in the world in less than an hour. Furthermore, it will be used to refuel other Starship spacecraft, enabling them to reach higher orbits and other space destinations. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, estimated in a tweet that 8 launches would be needed to completely refuel a Starship in low Earth orbit, extrapolating this from Starship's payload to orbit and how much fuel a fully fueled Starship contains. To land on bodies without an atmosphere, such as the Moon, Starship will fire its engines and thrusters to perform a controlled descent.
Starship flight test 2 was the second flight test of the SpaceX Starship launch vehicle. SpaceX performed the flight test on November 18, 2023. The mission's primary objectives were for the vehicle to hot stage—a new addition to Starship's flight profile—followed by the second stage attaining a near-orbital trajectory with a controlled reentry over the Pacific Ocean, while the booster does a boostback burn with a propulsive splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
Starship flight test 5 will be the fifth flight test of a SpaceX Starship launch vehicle. The prototype vehicles planned to be flown are the Ship 30 upper-stage and Booster 12. This fifth flight test had been expected to include the first attempted "catch" of the Super Heavy booster using the Orbital Launch Mount tower at the Starbase launch site. However, due to licensing issues, SpaceX may skip the catch attempt in favor of an earlier mission launch.
Starship flight test 6 will be the sixth flight test of a SpaceX Starship launch vehicle. According to NASASpaceflight, the prototype vehicles expected to be flown are the Ship 31 upper-stage and Booster 13.
↑ Baylor, Michael (21 September 2019). "Elon Musk's upcoming Starship presentation to mark 12 months of rapid progress". NASASpaceFlight.com. Archived from the original on 21 June 2020. Retrieved 12 August 2020. at SpaceX's launch site in Boca Chica, there was not much more than a mound of dirt [in September 2018 but one year later] the mound of dirt has been transformed into an operational launch site – outfitted with the ground support equipment needed to support test flights of the methane-fueled Starship vehicles. ... SpaceX is now assembling the vehicles near their launch site
↑ Foust, Jeff (27 August 2019). "SpaceX's Starhopper completes test flight". SpaceNews. Archived from the original on 26 November 2021. Retrieved 28 August 2019. SpaceX's South Texas site is unusual in that people live within a few kilometers of what the company eventually plans to be an orbital spaceport, in a subdivision called Boca Chica Village that predates the site by decades. Residents of the subdivision reported on social media that they were informed by local law enforcement to stand outside of their homes during the test, in the event an explosion created a shock wave that could break windows.
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