On Saturday, an electorate of Space X employees in South Texas voted to create the new town of Starbase and elect fellow employees as its mayor and city commissioners.<\/p>\n
That nearly unanimous vote made Elon Musk \u2014 in addition to the world\u2019s richest man and the head of the DOGE initiative reshaping the federal government \u2014 the employer of the entire government of what amounts to a SpaceX company town.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarbase, Texas,” Musk posted<\/a> on X, \u201cis now a real city!\u201d <\/p>\n It is unlikely to be his last. The establishment of Starbase on the southern tip of Texas as the state\u2019s newest town comes amid the quiet buildout of a colony just outside of Austin \u2014 one deeply tied to Musk\u2019s plans for the colonization of Mars.<\/p>\n The community of Snailbrook \u2014 which boasts more than a hundred homes, a grocery store and a Montessori school called Ad Astra, Latin for \u201cto the stars\u201d \u2014 represents Musk\u2019s move to consolidate his industrial and political power in central Texas.<\/p>\n Snailbrook\u2019s development comes amid repeated fines and complaints by Texas cities and environmental regulators, which have found that Musk\u2019s companies repeatedly<\/a> dump<\/a> industrial waste<\/a> into lakes, rivers and wetlands surrounding his facilities across the state. <\/p>\n It\u2019s also part of a grand vision.<\/p>\n \u201cIf successful, this model could be scaled and replicated \u2014 influencing future tech hubs globally \u2014 a vision for expansion,\u201d all-Musk news channel Muskuniverse reported<\/a> in November. \u201cThe bigger plan for Bastrop is Snailbrook.\u201d<\/p>\n Just 30 minutes east of Austin, Snailbrook is set to begin a new phase of rapid expansion by year’s end, a report <\/a>by Dallas-based public radio station KERA found in February.<\/p>\n Musk and associates view the town, which arose from conversations with his former girlfriend Grimes and the singer Kanye West, as \u201ca sort of Texas utopia,\u201d The Wall Street Journal first reported<\/a> in 2023. <\/p>\n Since then, the new settlement, which sits on unincorporated land in Bastrop County, is near a growing zone of Musk-owned industries.<\/p>\n The settlement sits near the headquarters for Musk\u2019s The Boring Company, which digs tunnels; an expanding SpaceX manufacturing facility that makes the company\u2019s Starlink internet kits and the new headquarters for X<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also about 15 miles east of Tesla\u2019s Gigafactory and the new headquarters of Neuralink, Musk\u2019s brain-to-computer startup.<\/p>\n In Texas, just 200 residents are needed to incorporate, as Starbase did on Saturday. As soon as a deal to link the new settlement to Bastrop\u2019s wastewater line goes through in the next year, Carrillo-Trevino said, it will grow far larger.<\/p>\n \u201cThink about how many acres [Musk] has,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s thousands [of homes] that could fit there.\u201d<\/p>\n The region is attractive because of its culture and a lax attitude toward regulation \u2014 aspects that are, for Musk, not easily untangled.<\/p>\n He began publicly exploring an exit<\/a> from California in May 2020, when the city of Fremont closed his Tesla factory due to COVID. <\/p>\n Musk reopened the Fremont factory<\/a> in defiance of the local government \u2014 he was a vocal opponent of Covid restrictions. As the lockdowns began in March 2020, he allegedly bet podcaster<\/a> Sam Harris $1 million that the pandemic would cause fewer than 35,000 cases in the U.S. By the time Johns Hopkins stopped collecting data<\/a> in 2023, the total was over 100 million, with 1.1 million deaths. <\/p>\n California had become the land of \u201coverregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation, poop on the sidewalk and scorn,\u201d he told<\/a> the conservative satirical website The Babylon Bee in December 2021.<\/p>\n By then, he was already investigating a move to Austin, where new \u201canti-woke” cultural icons like Joe Rogan, Brian Redban and Tony Hincliffe were moving. The University of Austin, a private school founded by conservatives like Bari Weiss and Ayaan Hiris Ali,\u00a0was announced<\/a>\u00a0in late 2021. Musk in 2023\u00a0filed papers<\/a>\u00a0to create his own university.<\/p>\n Musk finally announced his departure<\/a> in July 2024, after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a California law that prohibited schools from informing parents that their child was gay or transgendered against that child\u2019s will. But the move to Texas, where moves against DEI have become a driving force in the state\u2019s ruling Republican Party, also seems to have been about securing a freer hand for his businesses.<\/p>\n In February 2021, after announcing that the new Gigafactory that would build the Tesla Cybertruck would be in Austin, he told<\/a> Rogan that Austin would become \u201cbiggest boomtown that America has seen in 50 years, at least \u2014 megaboom.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to his gripes about California, Musk has long chafed against municipal authority. His complaints about California’s pandemic policy, for example, can also be viewed as a feud with the city of Fremont, which passed the ordinance that closed his factory. <\/p>\n And from the time SpaceX began launching rockets outside Boca Chica, Texas, Musk sparred with the small city\u2019s government over his repeated closures of the public highway to the public beach, to which tens of thousands of visitors came \u2014 and poured money into the local economy \u2014 every year, as\u00a0Fox reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n When he came to Austin in 2020, he asked then-Mayor Steve Adler to promise him that no one would slow Tesla down, the Journal reported. \u201cWhat he wanted from the city was speed,\u201d Adler, a Democrat, told the Journal in 2023. <\/p>\n Musk associates began buying up land in Bastrop County through shell companies like Gapped Bass as early as 2021<\/a> \u2014 creating the framework for what would become Snailbrook. <\/p>\n Unincorporated Texas county land \u2014 that not under the jurisdiction of an established city \u2014 is what one local development expert has called <\/a>\u201cthe wild, wild West.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey were in a hurry. They wanted things done yesterday, and if not yesterday then today,\u201d Paul Pape, a former county judge in Bastrop, told NPR.<\/p>\n In Texas, a light regulatory touch often means air and water pollution. <\/p>\n Tesla\u2019s pace has come at a price, a 2024 investigation by the Journal found<\/a>. Because Tesla wouldn\u2019t shut down its production line to fix broken parts, the Gigafactory \u2014 one of the world\u2019s largest car factories \u201cdumped toxic pollutants into the environment near Austin for months.\u201d That included 500,000 gallons of toxic water per day discharged into the Colorado River, as well as dumping untreated chemical-laden water into the city sewer system \u2014 without notifying city officials.<\/p>\n These violations echoed a fight between Musk and Fremont over the 112 air violations Telas\u2019s California factory racked up over five years \u2014 cases where Journal reporter Susan Pulliam found the company told regulators \u201cit was going to fix the problems but didn’t over a period of five years.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLegacy media is a sewage pipe of lies,\u201d Musk responded<\/a> on X after the Journal\u2019s reporting was published.<\/p>\n Outside of Austin, however, companies like Musk\u2019s only have to be concerned about state and federal environmental regulators. Texas environmental regulators have found repeated violations<\/a> of the Clean Water Act by Musk\u2019s companies across the state, and the company has faced repeated fines.<\/p>\n But they have been small in comparison to the size of those companies: $11,876 to the Boring Company for failing<\/a> to keep untreated wastewater out of local creeks and rivers upstream of the Bastrop water supply; $150,000 for polluting<\/a> wetlands in South Texas.<\/p>\n Texas environmental regulators in February unaimously permitted <\/a>Musk to dump 358,000 gallons of wastewater into South Texas wetlands.<\/p>\n Musk\u2019s business enterprises \u2014 and his entire political project \u2014 are wrapped up in the idea of settling unincorporated areas, specifically Mars.<\/p>\n In March, Musk announced plans for a first uncrewed mission to Mars at the end of 2026, followed by human landings by 2031<\/a> \u2014 which would rely on equipment built and launched from towns like Starbase and Snailbrook.<\/p>\n He told The Guardian that a \u201cself-sustaining base on Mars\u201d would allow humanity to regenerate<\/a> after a nuclear war, and Bloomberg that the red planet offers the sole option<\/a> \u201cif we want to become a multi-planet civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n And if humans \u201ccan establish a Mars colony, we can almost certainly colonize the whole Solar System, because we\u2019ll have created a strong economic forcing function for the improvement of space travel,\u201d he told<\/a> the science magazine Aeon.<\/p>\n So are Starbase and Snailbrook a blueprint for Mars? More immediately, proponents hope they will spread across Earth. Snailbrook, with its future bike lanes and walking paths, \u201caims to solve the disconnect between work and home life,\u201d by creating a \u201ctech-centric City where work, living, and leisure blend seamlessly,\u201d Muskuniverse reported in November.<\/p>\n That\u2019s effectively what Walt Disney did in Orlando, urban historian Sam Gennawey told The Guardian<\/a>. But Musk\u2019s Texas settlements, he argued, aren’t delivering. <\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s not being like Walt Disney and visionary in the sense of: \u2018I\u2019m going to create a different kind of community\u2019\u201d Genneway said. <\/p>\n Instead, he said, it recalled episodes in American history \u2014 where employers used their ownership of employee residences a means to discipline them. \u201cWhat Musk is doing is much more akin to\u00a0Pullman<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Lowell<\/a>, where it\u2019s just housing nearby owned by the guy who owns the company.”<\/p>\n For someone who demanded<\/a> that post-takeover X employees work \u201clong hours at high intensity\u201d and who brags<\/a> about his and DOGE employees habit of bedding down in federal buildings, the Guardian argued, this vision amounted to a kind of \u201cdystopia.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRather than \u2018work with us and we\u2019ll give you nice housing,\u2019 the message [of new tech industry] company towns seems to have become \u2018why go home when you could live at work?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n For supporters, however, Snailbrook and Starbase are a vision of the future. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s happening here is incredible,\u201d Kit Frederic, an Oregon native who moved to the unincorporated area outside Starbase, told<\/a> Poltico just before Saturday\u2019s vote. \u201cSomeday every state in the union is going to want something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Saturday, an electorate of Space X employees in South Texas voted to create the new town of Starbase and elect fellow employees as its mayor and city commissioners. That<\/p>\nWhat is Snailbrook?<\/h2>\n
Why central Texas?<\/h2>\n
Why found his own town?<\/h2>\n
Why are locals concerned?<\/h2>\n
What is the long-term plan for Musk\u2019s towns?<\/h2>\n