{"id":3199,"date":"2022-10-10T21:39:39","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T21:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/?p=3199"},"modified":"2025-07-25T10:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T10:41:11","slug":"spacexs-starship-poised-to-launch-texas-space-industry-into-new-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/es\/spacexs-starship-poised-to-launch-texas-space-industry-into-new-era\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX\u2019s Starship poised to launch Texas\u2019 space industry into new era"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brandon Lingle<\/a>, Staff Writer \u2022 San Antonio Express News<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the South Texas border village of Boca Chica, SpaceX\u2019s 17-story-tall Starship dominates the flat marshland and stands ready to blastoff into the stratosphere. Engineers will soon launch the Starship, which is almost as wide as a city bus, to 50,000 feet and return it to earth in the most ambitious test so far for the vertically-landing spacecraft.<\/p>\n

The trial will mark another step forward for the commercial space company in its quest to develop a reusable spacecraft to move people and cargo anywhere on earth and eventually to the moon, Mars and beyond.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has already colonized Texas with sites in McGregor and Boca Chica, and as the Starship takes off, its momentum could accelerate the state\u2019s commercial space economy into a new universe of jobs and business opportunities.<\/p>\n

The company has had a breakout year so far. It\u2019s sent the first NASA astronauts to space from American soil since 2011, celebrated the 100th successful Falcon 9 rocket flight and landed an Air Force contract \u2014 worth billions \u2014 to launch 40 percent of the nation\u2019s classified payloads from 2022 to 2024.<\/p>\n

SpaceX is also building a constellation of Starlink satellites that\u2019ll provide global broadband internet. The service is in beta testing. Ector County Independent School District in West Texas announced it will be the first school district in the country to use Starlink.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And in mid-November, SpaceX is scheduled to send a 4-person crew to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

The company is beating its competitors because Elon Musk, SpaceX\u2019s founder and CEO, \u201cunderstands the speed of innovation and how to innovate, and that\u2019s why he\u2019s moving fast,\u201d said Steve Kwast, a retired Air Force general and space exploration proponent. \u201cHe just wants to get to Mars so humanity has an escape valve when an asteroid or a virus or something starts threatening the human race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthew Gjertsen, a former SpaceX training and development manager, has seen Musk\u2019s work up close.<\/p>\n

With Musk, \u201ceverything comes down to first principles of engineering where \u2026 it\u2019s not about what things have historically cost. It\u2019s not about what we\u2019ve done in the past,\u201d said Gjertsen, who worked at SpaceX for four and a half years. \u201cIt\u2019s just: what does physics say is possible, and combine it with absolutely no sunk-cost fallacy \u2014 they never succumb to that. Elon doesn\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX is privately held, making it difficult to determine how the company is performing financially.<\/p>\n

Boca Chica Beach
\nAt Boca Chica near South Padre Island, Port Isabel and Brownsville, SpaceX\u2019s operations started slowly in 2014 and have ballooned over the last couple years.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the longest time,\u201d the company only moved dirt and set up pylons, says Nathan Burkhart, BCIC Director of Marketing & Small Business Development. \u201cThat was about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently, the launch center employs about 3,000, with as many as 1,500 workers on shift at any time, according to Burkhart.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had conversations with folks that work at SpaceX, and they\u2019re getting above average pay, especially for the highly-skilled workers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And SpaceX is hiring. The company has more than 80 open positions at Boca Chica, including cooks, engineers, computer administrators, welders, electricians, pipe fitters and even a bartender.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t until right now that we\u2019ve seen this tremendous injection of resources and activity and attention that SpaceX has been putting on the (Boca Chica) site,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kwast said the flurry of activity at Boca Chica is related to the Air Force\u2019s frustration over Florida and California launch costs as well as the slow pace of government acquisitions and the military\u2019s reluctance to take risks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think SpaceX basically got so fed up with the Air Force charging them $13 million every time they would launch or land at either Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg Air Force Base that they decided to just build their own plot,\u201d Kwast said. \u201cBecause the risk aversion in the Air Force is just killing them. It takes the Air Force eight years to do what SpaceX could do in one year \u2014 if they didn\u2019t have to deal with the Air Force or the Space Force.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Once they start seeing that activity in the sky sooner rather than later, I think everybody down here is going to start understanding completely what this impact is going to look like in the future.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Nathan Burkhart<\/strong>
\nBCIC Director of Marketing & Small Business Development<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Burkhart doesn\u2019t know yet how SpaceX and its suppliers are affecting the Brownsville-area economy; his office is working on projections. But he said the region\u2019s seeing more home-buying and more demand for services such as utilities and police and fire protections.<\/p>\n

So far, the Starship has only reached 500 feet and landed, so for many in the Rio Grande Valley, the vast potential of the spacecraft is hard to fathom. But that\u2019s going to change as rockets start reaching higher altitudes and are visible from nearby towns.<\/p>\n

\u201cFolks are understanding the ramp-up of activities happening at the beach, but not everybody goes to the beach,\u201d Burkhart said. \u201cOnce they start seeing that activity in the sky sooner rather than later, I think everybody down here is going to start understanding completely what this impact is going to look like in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The potential for growth both at Boca Chica and around the country is exponential, according to Gjertsen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of missions to Mars by something the size (of the) Starship,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd with every single mission, it\u2019s going to require 10 launches because of refueling.\u201d<\/p>\n

While SpaceX is moving fast, Kwast said, it could move faster with more government support.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, that\u2019s the bigger national tragedy here \u2014 that SpaceX is doing everything they can to succeed, but they\u2019ve got to do it with one hand tied behind their back,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if the Space Force would partner with them \u2014 if the government were to invest with SpaceX \u2014 and not be so afraid of them or worried about things that they no longer have to worry about \u2014 because Congress has given them a free bill \u2014 think about how fast we as an American society could transform transportation using space, energy using space, information using space, and manufacturing.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brandon Lingle, Staff Writer \u2022 San Antonio Express News In the South Texas border village of Boca Chica, SpaceX\u2019s 17-story-tall Starship dominates the flat marshland and stands ready to blastoff into the stratosphere. Engineers will soon launch the Starship, which is almost as wide as a city bus, to 50,000 feet and return it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economic-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brownsvillecic.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}