Tony Martinez was mayor of Brownsville when Musk chose South Texas for his launch complex over Georgia, Florida, and Puerto Rico Within minutes of the Starship 11 explosion-with rocket parts still smoldering on the landscape-he tweeted that he was donating $30 million to Cameron County and the City of Brownsville for schools and downtown revitalization.

Musk-believed to be the world's richest person-has been generous when the moment called for it. For a historically poor county where the best and brightest often felt they had to leave the Rio Grande Valley, SpaceX has been a godsend. Starbase employs nearly 1,700 people with a payroll of over $80 million. 'By the same token, we need them and want them to succeed.' 'We probably weren't doing what we should have been, so I understand (the public's) concern and we're trying to do a better job going forward,' Treviño says. The top elected official there, County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr., says they both should be more vigilant of the private space company. SpaceX activities are overseen by the FAA-which declined comment-and Cameron County in Texas. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gives an update on the next-generation Starship spacecraft at the company's Texas launch facility on Septemin Boca Chica near Brownsville, Texas. Later this summer, SpaceX plans to launch another unmanned Starship into earth orbit for the first time.) The March 30 explosion showered debris for five miles, including onto the wildlife refuge which is classified as critical habitat. (On May 5, another Starship prototype reached a height of 6.2 miles and returned for a safe landing on a concrete pad. Looks like we've had another exciting test of Starship number 11,' the launch commentator said, optimistically. 'As you can see from the frozen camera view we lost the clock at T-plus 5 minutes, 49 seconds.

The Starship is a massive space vehicle that, with reusable boosters, is meant to take people to the Moon or even Mars.īut experimental rockets mean things blow up, and that's what happened during a test flight on March 30. A prototype of SpaceX's Starship spacecraft is seen at the company's Boca Chica launch facility on Septemnear Brownsville, Texas.

Fishdom boosters new rocket