SpaceX: a neocolonizer’s fantasy
By Chris Sandoval and Caty Camacho
Elon Musk, CEO of several companies, and capitalist investor is seeking to expand operations of his space-faring company, SpaceX, in the sensitive Rio Grande estuary with the approval of Brownsville Texas, and Cameron county. But this expansion is not just bad for the city and county, allowing Elon Musk free reign to expand his business will open the door for a severe decrease in the quality of life for residents of the Rio Grande Valley through a series of changes that arises whenever rich people artificially replace working-class people in a region.
Ecological Consequences
To preface, the mere existence of the space launch site at Boca Chica Beach is already an ecological calamity. To compare to a well-known launch site, the ecological destruction at Cape Canaveral, Florida, a launch site with less frequent operations than SpaceX, necessitated an ecological remediation costing a billion dollars plus and continues to this day (Calma 2019, Chatterjee 2021, Gewirtz 2011, Neumann 2018). That price tag far outstrips even the most liberal of estimates of the money Elon’s project will bring to the region (Huertas 2019, Texas Border Business 2014). Each launch showers the ocean and surrounding estuary with heavy metals, toxic petroleum by-products, and physical sediment/contaminants which choke waterways, and cause deaths of local marine, terrestrial, and invertebrate animals (FAA 2021, Freeman et al 2019, Gewirtz 2011, Neuman 2018). The increased traffic to the area has dramatically increased the number of animals killed by vehicles. In addition to the launches, SpaceX built the coastal facility for its Falcon 9 and falcon heavy rockets but never launched either from there (Chapa 2021). SpaceX has long since surpassed the scope of its original permit, Elon Musk cannot be trusted to keep his word.
An expanded space facility will not just be an environmental burden however, the resort planned for development at Boca Chica Village will hurt local humans, animals, and plants as the area is a sensitive natural saltwater estuary. Adding more traffic, resort buildings and lanes of road will create a surge of pollution due to the amount of contamination that comes with building roads and with constructing luxury buildings (Freeman et al 2019). The construction of any luxury housing in this area would hurt the environment to create wealth for Elon musk. There is no reason to destroy the last, cleanest bay and estuary system in Texas just to fund someone’s greed. In addition to the spaceport, Elon Musk is also on the record trying to develop a natural gas well and refinery on the site of the spaceport (Chapa 2021, Wilcox 2021). After a several years-long battle with several multinational corporations, one of the three natural gas terminals slated to be constructed near the spaceport has been canceled for many of the same reason the spaceport itself is a bad idea, it crosses culturally sensitive area, and is adjacent to ecologically vulnerable estuaries, dunes, and tidal flats (Karami 2021). The spills, often unreported when under 100 gallons, which come with petroleum refinery activities would immediately expose the delicate ecosystems to toxic organic compounds and pollutants that can kill invertebrates and fish at very low concentrations, while some natural gas mining, such as fracking, even causes local earthquakes (Ellsworth 2013). SpaceX launched a subsidiary called Lone Star Mineral Development in preparation to extract natural gas on the launch site, acquired an 806-acre lease for mineral rights in the area, and bought two offshore rigs, possibly to have ready for further resource extraction (Chapa 2021).
There is important research to consider with regard to what SpaceX and Starlink claim to be for and what their effects will be. It is funny that many of the sentiments of inspiration Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Tesla and Starlink companies tend to echo are about scientific advancement and ecological concern. Examples of their appeal to sentimentality include saying about their products: “they will further space exploration, space travel, we will have faster internet, etc.”; but actual physicists, astronomers, and other scientific researchers have voiced their concerns with data of how much the “megaconstellation” proposed project by Starlink internet of around 12,000 satellites will illuminate the lower part of the Earth orbit, disrupting scientific observations (McDowell 2020, Witze 2019). Another example of the negative effects of these projects on the atmosphere is found in data from SpaceX rocket launches where scientists observed ripple disturbances that can alter winds in the upper atmosphere as well as electrodynamic perturbations in the ionosphere that could extend across the hemisphere (Lin et al. 2017, Chou et al. 2018). Scientists are not just being “haters”, they do real work, with real data, and have a real interest in knowing what the consequences of the actions by Musk’s companies are.
Other impacts to the life surrounding the area are to birds and small mammals since SpaceX has had 3 landing failures, the debris that was produced has caused damage to a large area on Boca Chica beach. Nesting animals such as the near-threatened Piping Plover are at risk from launch accidents such as fires and explosions. Fires that arise from these launch accidents would be burning the habitat for species that were not able to vacate the area. Every time a rocket explodes there is a possibility that the spilled propellant makes its way into the Gulf of Mexico. The endangered Aplomado Falcon breeds in the United States exclusively in the same ecosystem Musk’s company is using up, making acres of possible nesting sites unusable for nesting falcons. The Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle and Loggerhead Sea Turtles both are found in the waters immediately adjacent the launch site, sometimes even coming to fishing people at the water’s edge. Sharks, mullet, stingrays, eel, and even gamefish like redfish and black drum require the relatively safe waters of the laguna tidal estuaries adjacent to this launch site to raise healthy offspring. All these forms of life are threatened by a space facility and could even become locally extinct if an expansion is allowed.
One of the stated goals of the SpaceX facility is to function as a launching point for SpaceX Wi-Fi satellites. This satellite internet service will do a worse job of getting internet to rural communities and will cost more and create space junk negatively affecting nighttime darkness, and astronomical observation. Starlink is asking users to pay approximately $500 upfront for equipment and installation and an additional $99 per month for service. That is nearly twice the cost of fiber-based internet service to rural areas and far more susceptible to issues with weather and clarity compared to a relatively stable and far faster fiber-based service. Starlink will also not be immune to the current technology limitations affecting standard satellite internet, which are, issues during wind, rain, clouds, and from electromagnetic interference, as well as from low speeds during high traffic times. Starlink is just a vehicle for Elon Musk’s power and riches grab. As Musk has shown with his humiliating failures at the construction “The Boring Company” to drill a minuscule section of tunnel that has a speed more akin to a Disneyland ride than a high-volume transit solution (Weill 2019). Also, his humiliation trying to center himself and his vain/useless submarine in the Thailand children’s soccer team evacuation from a flooded cave, the projects that Elon designs and tries to defend as from the future are often just childish designs that he has developed a fondness for (Kolodny 2019). So, he pushes them even when they are not helpful and not needed, as with the submarine fiasco, and even when they are really really bad at what their stated purpose is, to the point that hundreds of millions of dollars have already been wasted, as in the Hyperloop project of the construction company.
Brownsville does not have the time or money to be wasting on Elon Musk’s vainglorious projects. A robust rural internet network is achievable by existing infrastructure, primarily, subterranean development, which is stronger, more reliable, and safer than hanging wires, and far safer and easier to repair than satellites, with an order of magnitude faster service to an exponentially larger number of rural homes. The satellite constellation required to implement the Starlink internet service would require a huge amount of satellites that have a functional life of 5 years, thereby requiring near-constant space flights to replenish units nearing end of life (McDowell 2020).
Some people might be convinced that even having Elon musk as a resident in the area might create an uptick in money going to the city, county, or region at large, but they would be quite surprised to learn the opposite is often true due to the power these financial elephants can throw around. For example, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates both live in Medina Washington. Despite the two richest people in the world living there, the city has been millions of dollars short of its budget the last two years in a row (Cornwell 2019). Mark Zuckerberg owns a vacation home in Hawai’i and is suing to get control of hundreds of acres of native Hawaiian land into his private control while thousands of native islanders are houseless (Wong 2019). If these two locales, Medina adjacent to the biggest city in Washington State, across Washington Lake from Seattle, and Hawai’i, one of the priciest places to live in the nation, are not able to collect enough money to benefit their population when these billionaires move into town, why does Brownsville or Cameron County think that things will be different with Elon Musk? Though he “promised” to donate some millions to “revitalizing downtown”, the money spent is nothing compared to an honest tax burden placed on these super rich people and companies, and revitalizing downtown is often code for giving money to businesses. Brownsville does not need more businesses, it needs services. It needs communal food centers, free housing, and improved infrastructure for public transportation. What good do a few bars with nice sidewalks and parking do when there are still houseless and hungry people?
Presumably, the reason Elon wants his house and business in the Rio Grande valley is so he can exploit the price of goods and land and consolidate power in the region. He wants to be the landlord of the valley and to be able to flex political power for whatever project he next dreams up. He wants to be a big fish in a little pond. The city of Brownsville is already bullied out of taking care of its people by the state of Texas, we cannot give the power to take even more away from the people to Elon Musk, who only cares for his image and himself. Brownsville had the first plastic bag ban in Texas overturned by the Texas governor, as did its COVID-19 mask mandate when governor Abbott threatened to sue, when will the state stop forcing us to accept their harmful governing (Nowlin 2021)? They clearly do not care about the people or the environment, and it is up to the local people to stand up against the giant who seems to have bought the city, the commission, or maybe even Trey the mayor for who knows how much. Maybe the powerful of the valley are getting gifts, maybe there are favors, but Trey Mendez the Brownsville mayor is sure acting like someone who needs to complete their side of the deal with a major company rather than someone who needs to make sure his city’s constituents are safe and protected from exploitation. In fact, the details surrounding the 10-year tax break awarded to SpaceX by Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos were kept secret until after SpaceX had already signed the document (AP 2014). Does that sound like ethical leadership? Offering up a huge swath of public land in exchange for no tax burden? What makes it odder still is the original reporting from The Brownsville Herald has been removed with the link to it from the AP now yielding a 404 error. The Tesla factory that was being considered to be moved to the valley last year still hasn’t been, and it’s more and more likely as time draws out that musk is trying to pull again from Bezos playbook, as amazon did in New York, which is to say game the region by dangling a large employment and money opportunity in exchange for tax benefits until they have been granted enough benefits in writing to deliver half of the plant they promised while taking all of the tax benefits agreed upon.
Elon claims his projects will help locals but the number of jobs they will provide to locals, even with liberal jobs estimates, pale in comparison to local school districts and universities, who do not receive large swaths of land to operate outside of the law (TBB 2014). Much of the land Elon is contaminating with his rockets around the site is national wildlife refuge land, and it is absolutely against the law to be contaminating land that is not yours, much more so refuge land. Elon is supposedly bringing jobs to the area but invites people from other places to move here. The valley has a wealth of resident engineering, science, and technology students at the university, studying around the state and country, and already graduated, but that is not who he invited. It is clear that the benefits that Elon offers are shapeless and intangible because he has no plans on following through with any of them, as his plans and requests frequently change with no warning (Chapa 20210, Wilcox 2021). He is going to follow the same hiring procedure tech startups always have and end up with a predominantly white male workforce from mainly Ivy’s and pseudoivy’s (UT, MIT, Berkeley, etc.) who transplant to the valley. As in most institutions, questioning of authority leads to firing, so no one will question why his workforce looks like that if they are dependent on him for money and food, and security.
With the increased workforce Elon is demanding comes an influx of salaried individuals, typically men, with no tie to the land, being told by their boss and money’d Elon Musk that they are special and beyond the mere mortals that live in town. These attitudes and employees predictably will bring an uptick in violent crime similar to how man camps bring crime in the north to communities around petroleum extraction sites and refineries (Finn 2020). Additional businesses set up to capture the money of these individuals will quickly create a gentrified and dangerous region and will create an incentive for police to violently repress anyone who discourages use of that region (i.e., anyone who rich people find displeasing will be at the mercy of violent removal by police) including houseless people and historical residents. In short time, even policies meant to decrease wealth disparities will increase them and create stronger, more polarized segments of society which are segregated, including regions and neighborhoods (Janoschka & Sequera 2016, Lee 2020).
Welcoming SpaceX will not make Brownsville or the valley better, more equitable, or more modern, it will just create a bigger stratification between the incoming rich people and the people who have been here their whole lives, for generations, and for time immemorial. If the economy were to suddenly develop around a luxury resort and space industry, what happens to the people who are currently left in the dust at this moment? Will all houseless people suddenly be provided for with all that influx of cash? Will all families in the lower valley be allowed to access the food resources that the valley produces every year with so many millions that are supposedly going to flow like water into the cities’ and counties’ coffers? The Carrizo Comecrudo, a nation of people indigenous to the valley, is not being allowed to live freely on their land or to return the land to native prairie and thornscrub, so businesses should not be given the right to clear huge swaths of land just because they have the money. It is absurd to think for example that the U.S. government would just sell off a national park because some rich guy wanted to put his new luxury resort in it, is it not? Why should one of the most progressive cities in the state have to accommodate a rich man’s greed by jumping through hoops for Elon and giving him the keys to the coast? If the quality of life for the bulk of valley people will not be positively affected, and a huge amount of natural capital will be negatively affected, why should this industry be given any permissions to continue operations, much less tax breaks for 10 years?
Elon Musk is a neocolonizer, he is attempting out loud to colonize Mars and has stated he will not follow any law besides his own once he arrives there. But even in his quest to prepare for that, and through his actions with SpaceX in the valley, he is continuing the colonization of the Rio Grande Estuary, the Rio Grande Valley region, and the entire ecological area across into Mexico as well.
Chris Sandoval is a high school physics teacher, holds a Bachelor of Science in wildlife and fisheries and a Master of Science in ecotoxicology from Texas A&M University.
Caty Camacho is a veterinary medicine student, holds a Bachelor of Science in microbiology from UT at El Paso and a Master of Science in neuroscience from Texas A&M University.
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