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We welcome news that Elon Musk plans to move the headquarters of Space Exploration Technologies Corp to the Rio Grande Valley. The move should greatly increase development Musk’s Starbase complex near the SpaceX rocket development and launch site at Boca Chica Beach.
Musk announced on Tuesday that he would bring the facilities here from their current location in Hawthorne, Calif., a southwestern suburb of Los Angeles. He also said he will move the headquarters of his X social platform, formerly known as Twitter, from San Francisco to an office complex in Austin, where he moved his Tesla offices from Palo Alto, Calif., three years ago.
The moves are part of an ongoing protest Musk has against California’s governor and legislature, and recent laws, regulations and policies with which he disagrees. On Tuesday he cited a new state law that prohibits California teachers and staff from discussing students’ gender identification issues with the students’ parents. He also complained about San Francisco crime levels as a motivation for moving the X offices to Texas.
Obviously, the moves benefit the Texas cities and the state in general, directly through the jobs they will bring to the area but also the prestige of being the headquarters of such high-profile enterprises.
The SpaceX move to Starbase could be a particular boon for the Valley, bringing high-tech opportunities to a region that historically has endured unemployment rates higher than the state and national average.
It certainly can help strengthen links Musk already has made with local educational institutions, from our universities down to public middle schools. Further development of cooperative agreements with those schools can help them create programs that can meet SpaceX’s needs while helping prepare Valley students for careers in the aerospace industry.
It’s currently unknown whether Musk plans to relocate rocket manufacturing plants from the Los Angeles area to Texas as well. Those plants work on the Falcon rocket family, although the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rockets, the largest rockets ever built and scheduled for use on future missions to the moon and Mars, already are constructed at the Boca Chica complex. Expansion of those facilities likely would serve the future plans of SpaceX, which already is seeking approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and Cameron County to increase the number of rocket launches it conducts from Starbase every year.
Such increased activity will require new environmental impact studies and surely will face resistance. For now, the more benign move of corporate offices to the area brings an injection of new workers and their contributions to the local economy, as well as avenues for future growth.
The Rio Grande Valley surely can use the economic boost, both in immediate numbers and in the diversity that our local economy needs to help insulate it from downturns in any single element, such as the current agricultural crisis resulting from our chronic water shortage.
Politically, people can like or dislike Elon Musk. Economically, he continues to boost our Valley’s growth and progress.
