These kids were probably noticed by many spectators at the Olympics.

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Up close, the picture is more depressing. For decades, almost no one in the area has been in business. Dusty storefronts, pawn shops, and withered palm trees all point to a dire situation. In fact, it is one of the poorest urban areas in the United States.

But for locals, their daily lives are different. Brownsville mayor and cafe co-owner Trey Mendez returned to his hometown in the mid-2000s. In 2019, when he decided to run for mayor of Brownsville, SpaceX was just a well-known company running an interesting but futile experiment 30 minutes from the city. Mendez’s campaign focused on safety and economic prosperity.


Trey Mendez, Mayor of Brownsville.

Four months after the election, Musk unveiled the Starship prototype. At the time, SpaceX's facility was still relatively small.



At some point in 2018, SpaceX changed its strategy to use the france number data South Texas site to build Starship and the Super Heavy rocket instead of launching Falcon rockets. Local authorities were not notified.

Of course, creating a vehicle to send people to Mars takes years, if not decades. Potentially, this means more explosions and further damage to the environment, excessive consumption of fuel, energy, and water. But it also means involving high technology, that is, hundreds and thousands of highly qualified engineers from the best universities and companies.

They'll probably want a house no worse than Florida or California, and good schools for their kids. Space projects of this magnitude always change the cities where they're located. That's what happened to Cape Canaveral and Houston when NASA came there.

When SpaceX changed its plans, Musk only had to notify one partner, the Federal Aviation Administration. In fact, in the states, this is the only agency that oversees all space and rocket-related activities. Cameron County has no official authority to allow or prohibit SpaceX from doing anything.

“In November 2016, we knew that SpaceX was preparing to launch heavy Falcon rockets, would launch satellites once a month, and that was it. In 2017-2019, Elon changed tactics. Instead of working on Falcon 9, he began to work on Starship. This was unexpected,” notes District Judge Eddie Treviño.