SpaceX Could Give Struggling Texas City A Boost
The space company SpaceX has identified a remote spot on the southern tip of Texas as its finalist for construction of the world's newest commercial orbital launch site.
The 50-acre site really is at the end of the road. Texas Highway 4 abruptly ends at the warm waves of the Gulf surrounded by cactus, Spanish dagger and sand dunes.
"Welcome to Boca Chica beach, Brownsville, Texas. It's where the U.S. really begins," says Gilberto Salinas, executive vice president of the Brownsville Economic Development Council. He's spent three years toiling to get SpaceX to build its first launch facility out here. The complex would include a hangar, fuel storage, payload processing facility, and launch control center.
"Right there," Salinas continues, gesturing to open coastal prairie, "you would have the actual launchpad itself where [they would erect the rocket] — and then off into space it goes."
SpaceX has been sending up its rockets at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral in Florida. Now they want a place to call their own, and it turns out that this lonely patch of coastland only three miles north of Mexico is a sweet spot for orbital spacecraft launches.
"We need to be able to launch eastward, and we want to be close to the equator," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told South by Southwest in Austin last year. "If things go as expected, it's likely we'll have a launch site in Texas, which would be really cool."
Related NPR Stories
The Two-Way
VIDEO: 'Sideways Rocket Hop' By SpaceX Prototype