(
The Hill
— A group of SpaceX workers in South Texas has decided to establish the new town of Starbase and have chosen their colleagues as the mayor and city commissioners.
The almost unanimous vote on Saturday turned Elon Musk into not just the wealthiest person globally and the leader of the DOGE project revolutionizing the federal administration but also the boss of an entire governmental workforce that essentially operates within a SpaceX-dominated community.
“Starbase, Texas,” Musk
posted
On X, “has transformed into an actual city!”
It’s improbable that this will be his final endeavor. The creation of Starbase at the southernmost point of Texas marks it as the latest municipality within the state. This development coincides with the discreet expansion of a settlement near Austin, which is intricately linked to Musk’s vision for colonizing Mars.
The town of Snailbrook—which includes over a hundred houses, a supermarket, and a Montessori school named Ad Astra, which means “to the stars” in Latin—symbolizes Musk’s efforts to strengthen his industrial and political influence in the heart of Texas.
Snailbrook’s development occurs despite recurrent penalties and grievances from Texas municipalities and environmental authorities, who have identified issues with Musk’s enterprises.
repeatedly
dump
industrial waste
into lakes, rivers, and wetlands around his facilities throughout the state.
It’s also a key component of an ambitious plan.
“If successful, this model has the potential to be expanded and duplicated—shaping global technology centers in the future—a vision for growth,” reported the all-Musk news channel Muskuniverse.
reported
In November, “The larger scheme for Bastrop is Snailbrook.”
What is Snailbrook?
Located just 30 minutes east of Austin, Snailbrook is poised to start a significant growth spurt by the end of this year.
report
as discovered by the Dallas-based public radio station KERA in February.
Musk and associates view the town, which arose from conversations with his former girlfriend Grimes and the singer Kanye West, as “a sort of Texas utopia,” The Wall Street Journal first
reported
in 2023.
Since then, the new settlement, which sits on unincorporated land in Bastrop County, is near a growing zone of Musk-owned industries.
The settlement sits near the headquarters for Musk’s The Boring Company, which digs tunnels; an expanding SpaceX manufacturing facility that makes the company’s Starlink internet kits and
the newly established base for Xصند
.
It’s approximately 15 miles east of Tesla’s Gigafactory and the newly established headquarters of Neuralink, Musk’s brain-to-machine start-up.
In Texas, just 200 inhabitants are required for incorporation, which is what Starbase accomplished on Saturday. Once an agreement is made within the coming year to connect the newly formed community with Bastrop’s sewage system, Carrillo-Trevino mentioned that it will expand significantly.
Consider the vast number of acres Musk owns,” she stated. “That space could accommodate thousands of homes.
Why central Texas?
The area is appealing due to its cultural elements and relaxed approach to regulations — factors that Musk finds difficult to separate.
He began publicly
exploring an exit
In May 2020, from California, when the city of Fremont shut down his Tesla factory because ofCOVID-19.
Musk
reopened the Fremont factory
defying the local authorities—he vehemently opposed the COVID-19 containment measures. When the lockdowns started in March 2020, he reportedly
bet podcaster
Sam Harris offered a $1 million bet stating that the pandemic would result in fewer than 35,000 cases in the U.S. According to data from Johns Hopkins,
stopped collecting data
In 2023, the figure surpassed 100 million, including approximately 1.1 million fatalities.
California had turned into a place characterized by “excessive regulation, too much litigation, heavy taxation, dog waste on the sidewalks, and disdain,” he stated.
told
The conservative satirical site The Babylon Bee in December 2021.
By that time, he had already started looking into relocating to Austin, where figures such as Joe Rogan, Brian Redban, and Tony Hincliffe were becoming prominent symbols of the “anti-woke” movement. Additionally, the University of Austin—a private institution established by conservatives including Bari Weiss and Ayaan Hirsi Ali—was gaining attention.
was announced
In late 2021. Musk in 2023.
filed papers
to establish his very own institution of higher learning.
Musk finally
announced his departure
In July 2024, following Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) signing of a California legislation banning schools from notifying parents that their child identified as LGBTQ+ without the child’s consent, another shift occurred towards Texas. This transition appears linked to areas experiencing backlash against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, which have significantly influenced the policies within the state’s dominant Republican party. Additionally, this move toward Texas seemed aimed at providing more operational freedom for his business endeavors.
In February 2021, following the announcement that the new Gigafactory responsible for producing the Tesla Cybertruck would be located in Austin, he did this.
told
Rogan said that Austin was poised to become “the biggest boomtown that America has witnessed in at least 50 years — perhaps even a mega-boom.”
Why did he establish his own town?
Aside from his issues with California, Musk has often resented local governmental control. For instance, his objections to California’s pandemic regulations may also be seen as part of his conflict with the city of Fremont, which enacted an order that shut down his plant.
When SpaceX started launching rockets outside Boca Chica, Texas, Musk got into conflicts with the town’s administration due to his frequent closures of the public highway leading to the popular beach visited annually by tens of thousands of tourists who contributed significantly to the local economy through their spending.
Fox reported
.
In 2020, when he arrived in Austin, he requested then-Mayor Steve Adler to assure him that nobody would hinder Tesla’s progress, according to reports from the Journal. “His primary request of the city was expediency,” Adler, who is a member of the Democratic party, stated to the Journal back in 2023.
Associates of Musk started purchasing property in Bastrop County using shell companies such as Gapped Bass
as early as 2021
— establishing the foundation for what would later be known as Snailbrook.
Land in unincorporated areas of Texas counties—areas not governed by any established city—is how a local development specialist describes it.
called
“the wild, wild West.”
Paul Pape, a former county judge from Bastrop, stated to NPR: “They were rushed. Everything needed to be completed yesterday, or at the latest, today.”
Why are locals concerned?
In Texas, minimal regulation frequently leads to air and water contamination.
Tesla’s rapid advancement has had its costs, as revealed in a 2024 probe conducted by the Journal.
found
Due to Tesla’s refusal to halt its assembly line to address faulty components, the Gigafactory, which stands as one of the biggest automobile plants globally, “released harmful contaminants into the vicinity around Austin” over an extended period. This involved releasing up to 500,000 gallons of contaminated water daily into the Colorado River, along with discharging raw wastewater containing chemicals directly into the municipal sewage system—without informing local authorities.
These violations mirrored a conflict between Musk and Fremont regarding the 112 airspace infractions accumulated at Tesla’s California plant over half a decade—instances wherein Journal journalist Susan Pulliam discovered that the company informed regulators they would resolve these issues but failed to do so for an extended five-year timeframe.
“Traditional media is a pipeline filled with deceit,” Musk
responded
Following the publication of the Journal’s report, this occurred on X.
Outside of Austin, though, corporations such as Musk’s primarily need to worry about state and federal environmental authorities. Environmental regulators from Texas have discovered
repeated violations
Of the violations of the Clean Water Act by Musk’s companies statewide, the corporation has encountered multiple penalties.
However, these amounts are modest compared to the scale of those corporations: $11,876 went to the Boring Company.
for failing
to prevent untreated wastewater from entering local creeks and rivers located upstream of the Bastrop water supply; $150,000
for polluting
wetlands in South Texas.
In February, Texas environmental regulators
unanimously permitted
Musk plans to discharge 358,000 gallons of waste water into the wetlands of South Texas.
What is the long-term plan for Musk’s towns?
Musk’s business ventures—and his overall political agenda—are centered around the concept of colonizing unclaimed territories, particularly Mars.
In March, Musk revealed his intentions for an initial uncrewed mission to Mars scheduled for late 2026.
followed by human landings by 2031
—which would depend on gear constructed and sent into space from places such as Starbase and Snailbrook.
He stated to The Guardian that a “self-sustaining colony on Mars”
would enable humans to rejuvenate
following a nuclear war, and Bloomberg mentioned the Red Planet
offers the sole option
if our aim is to evolve into a society with multiple planetary habitats.
If humans “can set up a colony on Mars, we can nearly assuredly colonize the entire solar system as well since it will drive significant advancements in space travel through robust economic incentives,” he stated.
told
the science magazine Aeon.
Are Starbase and Snailbrook meant to be blueprints for Mars? In the shorter term, supporters believe these projects could expand globally on Earth. According to reports from Muskuniverse in November, Snailbrook’s planned bicycle lanes and pedestrian pathways aim to bridge the gap between professional and personal life by developing a “technology-focused city” where employment, residence, and recreation coalesce effortlessly.
That’s effectively what Walt Disney did in Orlando, urban historian Sam Gennawey
told The Guardian
. But Musk’s Texas settlements, he argued, aren’t delivering.
“He’s not being like Walt Disney and visionary in the sense of: ‘I’m going to create a different kind of community,’” Genneway said.
Rather, he stated, it brought to mind instances in American history—where company owners utilized their control over workers’ housing as a method of exerting influence over them. “Musk’s actions are far more similar to this.”
Pullman
or
Lowell
, which is just some housing located close by and owned by the same person who runs the company.”
For someone who
demanded
That post-takeover, X employees operate “for long hours with high intensity” and who
brags
Regarding the tendency of him and DOGE staff to sleep in government facilities, the Guardian contended that this scenario represented a form of “dystopia.”
Instead of saying ‘join us and enjoy good housing,’ the message from these new technology industry company towns appears to be more like ‘why return home when you can reside where you work?’
For enthusiasts, though, Snailbrook and Starbase represent a glimpse into the future.
“What’s occurring here is amazing,” said Kit Frederic, a native of Oregon who relocated to the unincorporated region near Starbase.
told
Politico just before Saturday’s vote said, “One day, every state in the Union will desire something similar to this.”
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This content must not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or distributed without permission.
To get the most recent updates on news, weather, sports, and live videos, visit WAVY.com.
