SpaceX expands Starbase as Federal Aviation Administration reviews higher launch cadence

SpaceX launched Starship Flight 15 from Starbase outside Brownsville, Texas, at 5:47 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, and the Federal Aviation Administration is evaluating SpaceX’s request to raise Starbase launch and landing frequency from 25 per year to 100 and eventually 456.

Starship Flight 15 lifted off from Starbase outside Brownsville, Texas, at 5:47 p.m. Eastern time on Friday and flew east over the Gulf of Mexico. Two minutes after liftoff, the Super Heavy booster detected a guidance and navigation control problem and performed a simulated landing over the Gulf instead of a tower catch. The simulated landing ended with a loud explosion in the Gulf. SpaceX had aimed to achieve a double-catch during the flight but will need another test flight to recover both booster and Ship in one mission.

It then deployed 26 next-generation Starlink satellites, SpaceX’s internet communications network. SpaceX said ground cameras and two of the newly deployed Starlink satellites showed the heat-shield tiles protecting the spacecraft’s underside were in good condition. The Ship was vehicle number 42 off the production line and bore the words DON’T PANIC, a reference to Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

SpaceX commentator Dan Huot said the company could command Starship to tumble into the atmosphere to bring it down in the Pacific if flying over land was deemed risky. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop for air travel during Friday’s launch. The ground stop happened even though weather at Starbase was clear.

On Friday, SpaceX gave reporters a rare tour of its Starfactory manufacturing plant in Texas and prohibited photographs or videos during the visit. Each Starship rocket is more than 400 feet high and 30 feet wide, and Starfactory is a million-square-foot facility. Justin Styer, SpaceX senior director of Starship launch, compared the plant to a toy factory or automobile assembly line.

Starfactory contains five floors of office space with walkways overlooking the production floor, and its interior is mostly gleaming white with black swaths. Employees commonly wear black T-shirts and jeans, and a giant Mars globe hangs in the lobby. Half of the factory builds the Super Heavy booster and half is an area called Shipland for the upper-stage spacecraft, with a wide-open aisle running the length of the floor between them.

Danny Fain, director of booster production, said it takes seven to eight months to complete one booster or one Ship. Because multiple vehicles are under construction at once, the factory finishes one booster every four weeks and one Ship every two weeks. Fain said attaching a Raptor engine used to take five to six hours, but SpaceX has reduced that to 30 minutes.

Justin Styer said SpaceX wants space travel to seem extremely lame, meaning ordinary and common rather than rare and expensive. Sheila McCorkle, SpaceX vice president and general counsel for local issues, said about 8,000 people work on the Starbase campus on any given day. McCorkle called Starbase a capitalist commune that is well funded and said SpaceX built everything from the ground up.

Starbase was incorporated as an official city in May last year and has about 800 full-time residents, mostly SpaceX employees, with a few original Boca Chica residents remaining. In 2019, the area east of Brownsville along State Highway 4 was mostly empty marshy grassland with a silvery Starship prototype resembling a grain silo, a tent-like factory and about 30 houses in Boca Chica Village. McCorkle described the early days as a little bit Mad Max, with people living in tents, and said Starbase was a sandbar when SpaceX started. The SpaceX factory in Hawthorne, California, where Falcon 9 rockets are made, was originally a factory for airplane fuselages, while the Texas site was built from the bottom up for rockets.

The city government said Boca Chica Beach will not be bought, rejecting worries that the state might hand park control to Elon Musk’s company. Starbase City Administrator Cayetana Polanco said the proposed land transaction concerns land surrounding SpaceX’s launch facility, not the beach itself, and that the city is not a party to the deal. SpaceX’s proposal involves about 1,200 acres of land surrounding its Starbase launch facility, mostly mudflats and coastal dunes not used by people.

A draft agenda for an early November commission meeting said Texas Parks and Wildlife was discussing giving up control of 1,300 acres in Cameron County. The finalized Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission agenda did not include the potential land disposition, and it is unclear whether the commission will consider the transaction in the future. Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa, who defeated Gov. Greg Abbott in November’s elections, asked the Texas Parks and Wildlife executive director to take no action on the sale during her transition.

Justin Minsker, a spokesperson for Texas Parks and Wildlife, said the agency declined an interview but looks forward to working with Hinojosa and all elected officials. SpaceX said it found people entering Texas Parks and Wildlife-managed land, including sensitive coastal dunes, without authorization, and called unrestricted access near an active launch facility an unnecessary risk. SpaceX intends to preserve 600 acres of coastal habitat and says it has removed over 50 tons of trash weekly through beach clean-up efforts with the city of Starbase.

Most people living in Starbase work for SpaceX, and two of the city’s three commissioners are company employees. Boca Chica Village streets have been closed off to the public. Polanco said the people of Starbase have restored the beach, hosted weekly cleanups and Fourth of July events, and supported sea turtle conservation efforts.

SpaceX confirmed plans to build a $24 billion data center near the Port of Brownsville that includes a gas-fired power plant and super-computing campus. Construction is underway, has created more than 3,000 construction jobs, and is expected to create more than 500 permanent jobs once operational. Starbase city officials posted notice of a December public hearing to discuss a potential tax abatement agreement for the data center.

The company is also seeking a county tax break whose details are not public. SpaceX asked Brownsville city commissioners to de-annex the data center land from city limits and agreed to fund $220 million for Brownsville water and wastewater projects in exchange. Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a pause on data center connections to the Texas electric grid, but SpaceX said its facility will generate its own electricity and bypass the public grid.

During her campaign, Gina Hinojosa said she would ban all data center approvals until state lawmakers pass laws to protect Texans. She won the governorship in November 2026.

Flight 16 could be the first Starship launch from SpaceX’s revamped launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Another Florida launchpad is under construction at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SpaceX says the Texas site cannot support its planned launch cadence, so it is developing additional Florida launchpads and a launch complex in Louisiana.

Until recent years, rockets were generally expensive single-use throwaways, but repeated flight of Starship could transform the industry by enabling bigger, heavier satellites and cargo at lower costs. At 407 feet tall, Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, consisting of a Super Heavy booster with 33 engines and an upper-stage spacecraft called Starship or Ship. Elon Musk said in September at the All-In Summit that Starship is designed for full reusability and rapid reusability, like an aircraft.

NASA is counting on a version of Starship to serve as a lunar lander for its Artemis program, though catches are not needed for the Artemis III mission next year. The agency plans to fly Artemis III in the second half of 2027 as an Earth-orbit mission to practice docking procedures rather than go to the Moon. The agency has not yet decided which lander it will use for Artemis IV, which aims to land two astronauts on the Moon near its south pole.

SpaceX could attempt a major milestone next year by launching two Starships in quick succession, docking them in orbit, and moving liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants from one to the other. The company plans an orbital gas station supplied by tanker Starships, from which a Moon- or Mars-bound Starship would dock, refuel, and continue its journey. Elon Musk said on X in March last year that Starship would head to Mars by the end of 2026, with Optimus humanoid robots built by Tesla on board.

A previous Starship test flight in September was the first to enter orbit around Earth and deployed 26 of SpaceX’s newest Starlink satellites. A correction states the satellites are not yet operational.

On 20 April 2023, SpaceX’s Integrated Flight Test 1 broke apart about four minutes after liftoff in what SpaceX calls a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, and debris fell on local houses around Boca Chica. SpaceX closed its Boca Chica launch facility for four months after the explosion to conduct reconstruction and a huge clean-up operation.

In 2021, Rhiannon Adam and seven other civilians were selected from an open call for a free SpaceX Starship flight around the Moon funded by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa as part of the dearMoon project. The dearMoon project was cancelled in mid-2024 after participants received an email invitation to a Zoom call telling them it would not continue. Adam, born in Cork, Ireland, in 1985, says her photograph of the 2023 Starship explosion is now part of her Rhi-Entry project.