In 2013, SpaceX (the rocket company founded by Elon Musk) moved its base to a site in South Texas next to Boca Chica Village, a retirement community, after scoring a deal that included $15million in tax breaks. Since then, the company has been buying out the Texas retirement village because it wants to build a Mars prototype town called “SpaceX Village” adjacent to its Starship rocket-development and launch site.
However, half the retirees are refusing to sell their homes even when SpaceX has offered them three times the base appraisal rate for their properties. The residents refuse, saying it won’t be enough to get a similar property somewhere else since there they enjoy low taxation, and there’s an undeveloped beach nearby.
Now Elon Musk is reportedly ‘losing patience’ and wants his Texas neighbors to be moved out by March 31. He wishes to be able to work freely on SpaceX without risk. Musk told the residents at a meeting that he recommends they sell and move because of safety issues posed by Starship – a new spacecraft that may carry around 9 million pounds of propellants. The company’s senior director of finance even started offering flexibility to residents who are not prepared to cash in, and still, they refuse. It’s gotten to the point that the residents are in talks with non-profit legal representatives.
The homes that sold have been turned into storage sites, workshops, and delivery centers. A corner store that was bought out also is now home to spacecraft-tracking antennas from NASA’s old space shuttle program.
According to a new SpaceX job posting spotted by Business Insider (that has since been removed from the site), the SpaceX Village will be the company’s “private spaceport with eyes on Mars” and “an epic place to live and work.” It may feature “100 electronically bookable rooms and regularly planned activities, such as volleyball tournaments, rock climbing, kayaking, and “spaceport lounge events and parties.”
The listing doesn’t say if the purpose of the village is to house SpaceX employees or to create a tourist attraction. However, Musk did tweet earlier in February that SpaceX was “going max hardcore” on Starship design and production, which likely means that employees would be working 24/7 to realize the new system.
The Starship is SpaceX’s rapidly developing steel rocket system that (if realized as Musk envisions) will stand 39 stories tall and ferry 1 million people to Mars. It will also disrupt the transcontinental and international airline industry reducing the cost of access to space by approximately 99%.
