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Will SpaceX's Starbase become a city? Voters will decide on May 3

Five towering starship segments stand near cranes against a blue sky, by a dusty road walked on by a guy in a backwards white ball cap and tshirt.

Upper-stage Starship spacecraft and a Super Heavy booster stand at the end of a road next to SpaceX's Starship assembly facility in Starbase, Texas, on Nov. 16, 2023. (Image credit: Space.com / Josh Dinner)

SpaceX could soon have its own city in South Texas.

In December, Elon Musk's company submitted a petition requesting an election to potentially incorporate its Starbase site — the manufacturing and launch hub for its new Starship megarocket — as a city.

And now the time has come: The election will be held on Saturday (May 3).

If you're expecting some late-night vote-counting drama, you'll probably be disappointed.

"The election is likely to go Musk’s way. That’s because most of the voters work for him," wrote Lauren McGaughy of The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration of public radio stations in the Lone Star State.

"The Texas Newsroom obtained a list of the 283 voters eligible to cast a ballot in the Starbase special election," McGaughy added. "More than 3 in 5 work for SpaceX, according to an analysis of LinkedIn profiles and social media posts documenting their employment. An additional 20 were among the dozens of people who signed a petition calling for the incorporation vote."

So at least two-thirds of the folks eligible to vote in Saturday's election "either work for SpaceX or have already indicated their support for the new City of Starbase," she wrote. "The number could be much higher."

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Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, and it's designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. SpaceX thinks the vehicle will make Mars settlement — a long-held dream of Musk's — economically feasible at long last.

Making Starbase a city is a step along that ambitious path as well, according to the company.

"To continue growing the workforce necessary to rapidly develop and manufacture Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community," SpaceX said in the December 2024 petition, which was addressed to Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr.

"Incorporating Starbase will streamline the processes required to build the amenities necessary to make the area a world-class place to live — for hundreds already calling it home, as well as for prospective workers eager to help build humanity's future in space," the company added.

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Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.