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SpaceX’s second Starship launch on Saturday was felt through the Rio Grande Valley, in towns as far as Sarita in Kennedy County and even on the King Ranch.
This was especially true in the Laguna Madre region where SpaceX’s launch site is. In a beeline, South Padre Island and Port Isabel are just a few miles away from the company’s facility on Boca Chica beach.
Launch spectators from all over the world came to view Starship’s second ascent, as did locals. The pressure is on for SpaceX as the company prepares its rocket for lunar landings. SpaceX’s contract with the National Atmospheric and Space Administration (NASA) calls for the rocket to carry humans to the moon by 2025.
“I had a dream the same way, when I was a kid, to go to the moon, around this time” a spectator from Brownsville named “J.B.” told TPR at Isla Blanca Park, wearing an astronaut costume complete with helmet. “But I don’t know, it seems better how [SpaceX CEO Elon Musk] is doing it.”
“When we heard about Tesla and then Elon Musk opening SpaceX here, I mean that gave us excitement for space again,” Mike Campos, also from Brownsville, also in an astronaut costume, said.
The excitement was clear at Isla Blanca Park, which lies at the southernmost end of South Padre Island. It has one of the most unobstructed and publicly accessible views of SpaceX’s launch pad. Cameron County, which oversees the park, made $20,000 in cash-only entrance fees during the first launch.
Less vehicles came into the park for this second launch, Cameron County Parks Director Joe Vega told TPR, but there were still thousands of people inside. Many people walked into the park rather than driving.
On the northern end of the Island, alligators at the South Padre Island Birding, Nature Center and Alligator Sanctuary got a rude awakening Saturday morning. The low frequency, wall-shaking rumble makes the 50 or so alligators bellow, or growl, in unison.
“They detect micro changes in water pressure, which is vibration, right?” Jake Reinbolt, who oversees all alligator operations at the center said. “Generally when you have things like that going on, a launch, something in that regard, they don't know how to perceive that. I joke that they probably think it's a very, very big alligator challenging them.”
The launch noise doesn’t hurt the alligators, and they quiet down as the noise fades, Reinbolt said.
Elsewhere in the Laguna Madre area, however, the noise and plume from Starship concerned residents, just as it did the first time it launched.
People living in South Padre Island, Port Isabel and Laguna Vista took to Facebook to question whether SpaceX did anything but shake the walls in the community’s homes during launches. Some residents have mixed feelings, saying they want space exploration but not done privately and not at the expense of the area’s ecology.
“I grew up in the 60s, during the space race,” Jose Sanchez, a Weslaco native who has lived on South Padre Island for the last seven years, told TPR. “Then, it was like a fantasy. Now living here, the reality is it’s right there.”
Sanchez likened the launch experience to a small earthquake as he held his chihuahua and watched from the street outside his home. While he thinks Island residents will eventually adjust to the launches, he says local leadership and residents should be pushing back against SpaceX more.
“I just don't think that there's enough investment in the community as a whole,” Sanchez said. “It's more taking advantage of us and what we've got here.”
Other residents celebrated, congratulating SpaceX for what they and fans of the company say was a successful launch. Businesses on South Padre Island, like seafood and Tex-Mex restaurant Nautico Island Grill, displayed one of the original pro-SpaceX phrases during the company’s early days in the area, “Boca Chica to Mars,” on its marquee.
However, Starship still exploded, along with the booster that carried it to space. SpaceX thought the explosion was from something triggering Starship’s on-board flight termination system, the same control that ended Starship’s first launch. The company has not publicly determined the true cause of the explosions or where the debris is.
Starship’s debris is likely in the ocean near Puerto Rico, based on videos from residents there. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched an investigation into the explosion immediately afterwards. No injuries or damage were reported, the FAA said.
Starship’s launch pad held this time, but local environmental groups, some of the 27 who signed a letter earlier this year opposing Starship’s initial launch from Boca Chica, condemned the second launch.
The organizations called on the FAA to issue an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), a more thorough environmental review, for local governments to invest in their communities instead of SpaceX, and said the company routinely, and will continue to, damage Boca Chica Beach and the ecology of the Laguna Madre area.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on X, formally Twitter, that the company will have another Starship ready to fly in three to four weeks. The FAA provided no timeline on when it would finish its investigation.
