Wade at night into the gently lapping surf at Boca Chica Beach, an undeveloped stretch of sand about 20 miles east of the Texas border town of Brownsville, and ahead you’ll see nothing but Gulf waters meeting sky—endless, dark but for the stars and languid whitecaps. A pensive, ancient view to make you feel small and the world enormous.
Turn around and everything inverts. Beyond a smattering of working-class Latino families, gathered around bonfires and pickup trucks on the beach, looms something brimming with novelty, brightness, and ambition: the South Texas launch site for SpaceX, where one day a 400-foot rocket may leave Earth en route to Mars.
Just 1,500 feet from the water’s edge, amid rolling sand dunes and acres of tidal mud flats, rises a launchpad of towering cranes and scaffolding lit up like a sports stadium. Two miles back down State Highway 4, the only road reaching this remote bit of Texas coastline, is a bustling command and production facility. Around 10 p.m. on a June evening, construction workers huddle together on a platform encircling a huge white tank, consulting in Spanish about the job at hand, their acetylene torches showering sparks into the night air. Out front, where the company has erected an illuminated sign reading “Starbase,” tourists arrive to take selfies. One man says he came all the way from Kentucky, hoping to get a job with SpaceX. He’s exultant. “It’s like 530 years ago,” he says, “the last time we settled a new world.”
