San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Bumpy ride ahead for SpaceX in the Wild West of Boca Chica
The SpaceX saga in South Texas has all the “versus” categories covered. Remember the “Types of Conflict” lesson in English class? Humans versus humans, nature, technology, destiny, society.
And there’s subcategories — citizens versus business and government; a fast-moving corporation versus federal bureaucracy; pristine wilderness versus development; technology versus physics; fans versus opponents; past versus future.
Or becoming an interplanetary species versus depending solely on Earth. Some would say survival versus extinction. The list goes on.
These conflicts are the marrow of amazing stories, so it’s easy to get drawn in.
Beyond that, Boca Chica has captivated me because the beach and space combo feels like home. The place reminds me of growing up in Lompoc, Calif., near Vandenberg AFB.
My neighborhood was Vandenberg Village, the closest civilian homes to the base. They’re nowhere near as close as Boca Chica village is to SpaceX, but I remember the low thunder-rumble of early morning launches during my childhood. There’d always be a moment of terror as I tried to figure out if the noise was a missile or an
earthquake.
In those days, the base rarely announced the launch schedule.
Vandenberg also hosted air shows, and all sorts of military aircraft took advantage of the base’s 3-mile-long runway. Huey helicopters patrolled the chaparral and B-52 bombers flew over my middle school. Seeing people
in uniform around town was normal. The influence of the base, in part, led me to a military career.
SpaceX’s rapid build-out echoes Vandenberg’s history — only 80 years later. Both became critical to their era’s space race. Both reside in swaths of nature. Both have neighbors who love
and hate them. Both fuel their area’s economies. Both create nuisances and pride for the locals. Both inspire. Both are fragile despite their stature.
And both must work on the relationships with their neighbors to survive.
I say fragile because the aftermath of the space shuttle Challenger
disaster devastated the Vandenberg region’s economy.
The area was ramping up to host hundreds of thousands of visitors who’d watch future shuttle missions launch from the base. NASA and the Pentagon had even announced a mission and the crew that would fly aboard Discovery in the first
launch from Vanderberg. The media captured photos of Enterprise, the space shuttle mockup that was assembled at the base’s Space Launch Complex-6.
Then the Challenger exploded, and all those plans vanished. The region had some tough years, with layoffs, lost contracts, business closures and a rethinking of its future without the boon of manned spaceflight.
The critical difference is that Vandenberg, the nation’s West Coast space launch base, is a federal installation. The place started out as the Army’s Camp Cooke in 1941, later became an
Air Force base and started lobbing missiles in 1958. It will eventually become a Space Force base.
The scar tissue from the government procuring Vandenberg’s land is deep, and like Boca Chica, some people hate the environmental impacts, limited beach and wilderness access, and the overwriting of native histories. The land at both Boca Chica and Vandenberg is sacred to their areas’ indigenous people, the Carrizo/Comecrudo in the Rio Grande Valley and the Chumash of coastal California.
As an added moral dilemma, Vandenberg is infused with the specter of nuclear war. The Cold War legacy clings to the base like coastal fog. Today, the base still trains the nation’s missileers and test-launches Minuteman missiles, often with dummy warheads that fly to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific.
On the flip side, Vandenberg has provided thousands of jobs for locals for decades — including my family members and friends. It’s brought a diverse mix of people to a part of California that depended on agriculture and mining before the military came.
As federal property, the base also protects more than 90,000 acres and 40 miles of coastline from commercial development.
While not perfect, the military invests millions to develop and maintain bonds with the communities near its bases. Vandenberg is no different. Close relationships with local civic and government
leaders help when things get weird, and things get weird quickly when missiles blow up near towns. So it’s good to have friends who can help smooth out problems.
SpaceX has capitalized on the goodwill that the military and NASA have cultivated over decades at Kennedy Space Center
in Florida and Vandenberg because the network was already set up. The company also leverages the federal infrastructure at these places.
But those government resources aren’t at Boca Chica. SpaceX is out on its own there, responsible for a raft of things beyond making rockets — such
as security, safety, clearing exclusion zones and more.
Vandenberg and Kennedy are controlled and secure environments. For SpaceX, Boca Chica is the Wild West. While it all seems very Texas-y, with the rugged individualist approach, SpaceX is running into more turbulence as it gains momentum. The FAA investigation remains open on Starship SN11, the craft that blew up in the fog and rained debris on marshlands on March 30. According to the FAA, SpaceX won’t be authorized to fly its next Starship, which is on the launch pad, until the investigation is closed or the craft is deemed safe.
There’s a $20 million lawsuit against the company by a family who crashed into a truck turning into the SpaceX complex. The accident killed the father and injured the rest of the family.
The FAA and Army Corps of Engineers are doing environmental reviews of SpaceX’s expansion requests. And in Brownsville, a small but growing group of opponents is getting louder.
Developing a relationship with the residents of the Rio Grande Valley could help educate them about the company, and there are ways to do this beyond the guerrilla marketing that thrills SpaceX fans.
Transparency builds trust. While SpaceX is open about its testing — posting updates and broadcasting live feeds — there’s little formal interaction with the community outside of that.
As a private company, SpaceX has that right, but it’s not wise for the long run. Since the firm is building a space launch complex rather than only a factory in Boca Chica, it should look to how other space bases build community relationships.
A good bond with the neighbors helps soothe much of the human versus human conflict. As smart as the SpaceX people are, they surely can figure out how to get along with their neighbors. Right?
I’m looking forward to the day a Starship flies from Boca Chica to Vandenberg. It’s likely coming sooner than we think.