AUSTIN — Elon Musk’s “company town” in coastal South Texas will have the power to shut down beaches and highways for SpaceX rocket launches under a new bill passed by state lawmakers.
The proposal was among a few legislative wins for Musk and a newly formed city, Starbase, led by current and former employees of the world’s richest person’s space exploration business on the southern tip of Texas.
The new powers will come from House Bill 5246. Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill into law on Friday.
Lawmakers decided to give the town the ability to shut down public areas for launches during closed-door negotiations as the legislative session wrapped up in early June. Those provisions weren’t in the proposal until hand-picked members of both chambers added them as the House and Senate worked out differences between two versions of the bill.
Now, officials from the city of Starbase — which was voted into existence on May 3 and is controlled by current and former employees of SpaceX — are poised to have the final say on closing down everything from beaches to highways to coastal waters for hours during rocket launches.
“The question is, who gets to make the call and who is in the best position to have the public interest in mind in closing a public beach?” Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, said during debate on the bill. “And I submit to you, it’s not the people in the company town that is effectively a wholly-owned subsidiary of SpaceX.”
Neither the city of Starbase nor SpaceX returned emailed messages seeking comment.
The city surrounds SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch site, which was recently given authorization to quintuple the number of space launches it can conduct each year to 25.
Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, carried the bill that originally dealt with the administration of the state’s space commission. His office did not respond to emailed messages seeking comment.
“It was sneaky,” said Cyrus Reed, conservation director for the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter. “It was definitely out of bounds, but they did pass [a resolution] that allowed them to go outside the bounds.”
Bonnen said during debate on the bill in June that the overall bill reflected “the future being shaped right here in Texas.”
“What is happening in our state is literally equivalent to what happened at Kitty Hawk in 1903 when the Wright Brothers first flew,” Bonnen said.
SpaceX has done the heavy lifting for NASA in recent years, launching astronauts and equipment off the planet.
The company’s close connections to the federal government came under partisan scrutiny after Musk, its CEO and founder, spent hundreds of millions funding President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Environmentalists and some residents of the Boca Chica community have criticized SpaceX for its impact and strong-arm tactics in recent years.
Bonnen’s bill also gives new power to the Texas Space Commission — a board of nine government appointees that includes a general manager of Starbase at SpaceX, an astronaut, officials associated with Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and a university president. Its main charge has been doling out $150 million in space grants authorized in 2023 under another Bonnen bill.
The board soon will be able to shut “public venues” down for SpaceX launches. Those closures must also be approved by the city of Starbase, a city where 60% of the residents work for SpaceX.
The bill’s passage was one of a few laws passed during this year’s legislative session that could benefit or at least make allowances for Musk’s space operations in Texas.
Among them is $300 million more in space-related grants that the Texas Space Commission will oversee. Those additional dollars were in the Legislature’s supplemental budget bill — which Bonnen also authored.
Several companies that do business with SpaceX received grants this year from the commission, and SpaceX itself received one worth up to $7.5 million from the program in February.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ space travel company, Blue Origin, received a grant of up to $7 million from the commission.
Meanwhile, the Legislature designated SpaceX’s launch site as “critical infrastructure,” which makes it a felony to vandalize or disrupt operations at the facility.
Lawmakers also carved out provisions in new state park board regulations on coastal wind farms after they realized SpaceX’s launch site might be impacted. The regulations were part of an effort to protect coastal migratory birds.
Multiple bills that aimed to give SpaceX near-complete control over beach closures failed. Another proposal that would have given SpaceX a tax break also failed to cross the finish line before the legislative session ended on June 2.
