Elon Musk’s employees at his rocket launch company SpaceX have filed a formal petition to create the city of Starbase.
By J. David Goodman, New York Times
Over the past few years, Elon Musk has expanded his footprint in Texas, moving his companies from California and building offices, warehouses and manufacturing plants across a growing number of Texas counties.
Now Mr. Musk is trying to do something that few, if any, titans of industry have done in a century: create his own company town.
Mr. Musk has long talked about his desire to make a new town — which he hopes to call Starbase — in coastal South Texas, where his rocket launch company, SpaceX, is based.
For years, the plan did not appear to be moving forward in any official way, in part because creating a new municipality in Texas requires a certain number of residents and support from a majority of voters.
But in that time, SpaceX employees have packed into newly refurbished midcentury homes and temporary housing — some of it in the form of silver Airstream trailers — in the shadow of the company’s rockets.
Then this month, company employees who live around its offices and launch site took the first major step toward incorporating a town, gathering signatures and filing an official petition to hold an election.
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