Boca Chica to Mars”: Rockets and community resistance in the Rio Grande Valley

• In Event: The New Space Era and American Empire: SpaceX, Satellite Launching, and Local Community Responses

Abstract

Popular conceptions of outer space frame it as a placeless environment. Devoid of terrestrial barriers limiting the building out of information and communications infrastructures to remote places. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation comprising several thousand satellites operates in low-earth-orbit, embodying the promises and capabilities of future satellite internet technologies seeking to provide global, unbound internet connectivity. Yet, Starlink, as with other space-based infrastructures, remains intimately tied to place through the material relations that need to be carried out and maintained.

This encompasses the terrestrial facilities critical to Starlink’s growth including Starbase, SpaceX’s production and rocket testing facility located in Boca Chica, TX within the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). The RGV is a predominately Hispanic region along the United States-Mexico border and is home to some of the poorest urban counties in the United States. Starbase has been cited for numerous violations by the FAA, EPA, and other regulatory bodies due to the environmental impacts caused by rocket testing. The site is located on Carrizo/Comecrudo land near a sensitive ecological region where launches have produced large impact craters in endangered migratory bird habitats, generated extensive noise pollution affecting surrounding rural communities and wildlife, and dumped millions of gallons of wastewater into the Gulf of Mexico. These socio-economic and environmental effects have led a consortium of environmental and grassroots organizations in the RGV to file several lawsuits against the FAA, SpaceX, and the state of Texas.

Despite these protests and environmental damages, SpaceX seeks to increase testing at Starbase for its Starship rocket from 5 to 25 launches per year with the intention of using Starship for the mass deployment of Starlink satellites. The prospect of increased launches at Starbase highlights critical issues encompassing resource and landscape expropriation, environmental justice, and competing digital futures in the context of the growing space economy. How do SpaceX’s actions at Starbase intersect with histories of colonization and dispossession in the RGV? In what ways are claims to outer space reliant upon the socio-economic and environmental exploitation of specific terrestrial sites?

Situated in the fields of Science and Technology Studies, infrastructure studies, and political ecology, this paper analyzes the convergence of rocket testing, land enclosure, environmental damage, and community resistance in the RGV. First, I examine the growth of Starbase and the ramifications of the FAA’s use of programmatic environmental assessments for evaluating the impacts from Starship testing. Then, I detail how RGV residents characterize and experience the socio-economic and environmental effects of Starship testing with reference to their multiple lawsuits. Finally, I situate these facets within the broader political economy and imperialist ambitions of SpaceX for orbital environments.

This research utilizes ethnographic research methods including site visits, document analysis, and interviews with members of community groups in the RGV such as Save RGV, the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas. By documenting these perspectives, I draw attention to the insufficiently examined socio-economic, political, and material impacts of rapidly developing commercial space infrastructures.

Author

• Donny Persaud, Cornell University