Starbase, SpaceX’s launch site turned company town in South Texas, faces local opposition from residents outside the city limits

City leaders held their first public meetings this week since voters approved the South Texas city’s incorporation.

Before SpaceX’s Starship lost control and exploded over the Indian Ocean during its ninth test flight, the 400-foot-tall megarocket blasted off from Texas’s newest city. Starbase, situated on 1.5 square miles of the Lone Star State’s southernmost tip in the Rio Grande Valley,