SpaceX’s Starbase is already home to prototypes of Starship, which will take humans to the Moon, but it’s ready to become a real city
In Elon Musk’s vision, humanity will become a “multiplanetary species”: in the not-too-distant future, all Earthlings who want to can move to and live on Mars. The trip will have an affordable cost to anyone who has a house to sell on Earth, and to carry out the route there will Starship, the largest rocket ever built.
To make concrete such a design, first of all we need a spaceport capable of receiving travelers and offer them all the necessary infrastructure and amenities: a real city of the future, which is already partly reality.
Boca Chica or Starbase?
Elon Musk arrived in the Texas village of Boca Chica back in 2014, looking for a suitable site to build a launch base for SpaceX’s commercial missions. Unthinkable is the prospect of leasing launch bases from NASA in perpetuity, for someone with such a magnificent vision of the immediate future of space exploration.
The village of Boca Chica is now essentially a huge construction site: after purchasing almost all of the rural property in the area, SpaceX began building in Starbase Starship facilities, but the future of Boca Chica sees the construction of an entire city dedicated to space exploration.
Starbase, the city of the future, will house everyone working on SpaceX’s programs, space-bound travelers and even tourists who want to watch Starship launches. This is where the ships that will send the first humans to Mars will leave from, and in preparation for their journey they will need facilities that only a small city can provide.
Starbase may not be the city of the future of Musk’s vision, but Starbase is already a living reality. Starship and the SuperHeavy launcher were born here, and together they make up the most powerful rocket ever designed on Earth. To get an idea, SpaceX’s vehicle will be at least twice as powerful as Saturn V, the NASA giant that took men to the Moon.
Static testing of SupeHeavy’s 29 Raptor engines, a SpaceX innovation that will allow rockets to travel by replacing kerosene with methane, with the prospect of extracting it on site once they reach the red planet, is also taking place here.
Starbase is now the base of operations for the most ambitious project ever undertaken in space exploration. But what else will happen in Boca Chica, Texas?
The city of the future
The skyline of the city of the future dreamed by Elon Musk is already quite clear: Starship, with its 120 meters high, towers above every other human construction as far as the eye can see. And already today it is not uncommon to see more than one at the same time, looking towards the Gulf of Mexico.
But the progress at home SpaceX runs fast, and has recently added to the horizon Mechazilla, a huge steel robot able to stop with two giant robotic “wands” Starship on its return, to bring it in a few minutes to the next refueling and prepare it for a new launch.
In Musk’s vision all spacecraft parts must be reusable, in order to contain costs and allow anyone who wants to, in the future, to move to Mars. At stake here is not the fun of a few millionaires, but a perspective that sees humanity united as a multiplanetary species.
Elon Musk recently confirmed the idea of wanting to incorporate the rural village of Boca Chica within the city of the future that is rapidly rising near Starbase. It will surely be one of the most important launch sites in the world: in 2025 one of the spaceships of the Artemis 3 Mission, which will take men to the Moon again, will leave from here.
Already last spring Musk invited via twitter to “consider moving to Starbase and encourage friends to do so”: Starbase is growing rapidly, but the city will not be open only to SpaceX workers, in a future that is believed to be very near.
Some analysts are talking about a new space-themed Silicon Valley, where the centrality of research activities will be made possible, just like in the Palo Alto citadel, by the presence of top-quality proximity services, from free food and laundry to wi-fi on buses.
According to Texas jurisdiction, a potential city needs at least 201 residents, and a core around which the city has the ability to develop not only in terms of technology, but also in terms of services and infrastructure. In addition, Boca Chica residents who have not agreed to leave the village will be asked to vote on whether or not to be incorporated within Starbase.