Category Archives: Boca Chica Texas

(NAPSI)It may sound futuristic but there are people today living in homes created by a 3-D printerand you can too.

A. What is 3D Printing

3D printing started out as a way to make design prototypes for modeling. It has been used in healthcare, manufacturing and other industries. Now, the technology has spread and the cost of the printers has dropped.

Most people are familiar with 3D printing for its ability to create small things, but construction-grade, large- scale 3D printers is changing the housing industry helping builders create better houses, faster and at less cost.

B. 3Ds Advantages

Automation and increased productivity means 3D-printed house shells can be built on site with mobile and industrial-sized devices, up to nine times faster than with traditional methods while creating little to no waste of resources. That can save up to 30% of the cost. 3D also creates the opportunity for unique design such as curved walls (expensive if even possible with bricks and wood).

Whats more, 3D homes can be cus- tom-made and pre-designed for efficient installation of all the componentseven plumbing and electricity. Plus Api Cors advanced 3D print material allows printing very fine walls that are smooth to touch and can be painted right away. 3D printed building material is a durable concrete mortar thats 33% stronger than traditional concrete blocks. The walls are also reinforced to resist hurricanes and earthquakes.

C. How It Works

A standard pickup truck with a flat- bed trailer can haul the building system to a construction site. No cranes or big crew are needed to deploy and operate the printer. Instead, an operator uses a joystick to maneuver the equipment and print the building walls. Then a robot creates the desired shape of a build-ing directly on site, layer by layerthe same as is done with traditional plastic 3D printing but using a strong concrete mortar instead of plastic and a much bigger machine than a desktop box-sized printer.

D. See For Yourself

You can view a 3D house printer, touch examples of 3D printed walls, check out how plumbing and insulation are incorporated and watch the walls be painted at the worlds first showroom for 3D printed homes in Apis Cors home office in Melbourne, FL and online at http://www.apis-cor.com/showroom.

E. Building Your 3D Home, Career And Portfolio

The company pioneered 3D printing technology for construction, holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the worlds largest 3D printed building and has printed a residence in Missouri and a commercial building in Boca Chica, Texas. Api Cor is currently accepting reservations from individuals who want a 3D printed home.

Apis Cor also offers a comprehensive online course on house printing and a unique opportunity for investors to get involved in an emerging technology.

Here is the original post:

The ABC's Of 3D House Printing | Ftluptonpress.com - Fort Lupton Press

Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Texas), Elon Musk and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) break ground on the Boca Chica, Texas site of SpaceX's spaceport in 2014. (Photo by Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images)

Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Texas) plans to announce in the next few weeks that he will resign early from Congress to begin a job at the law firm and lobbying firm Akin Gump, the congressman told Forbes on Thursday.

In January, Vela, who had already said he would not seek reelection, informed the House Committee on Ethics that, as a result of his negotiation or agreement regarding future employment, he was recusing himself from any matter regarding Akin Gump.

The five-term lawmaker confirmed that he will join the firm full-time to practice law in its public-policy practice. Before officially announcing his resignation, Vela said he wanted to see what the Senate would do with a bill he had sponsored to transfer property to Texass Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park, which the House passed earlier this month.

The timing now, with just nine months left in the term, Vela said. Im just ready to go.

Vela said that while one of his reasons for picking Akin Gump was the firms deep Texas history, hed be based in its D.C. offices.

Earlier this year, Akin Gump announced it had hired Velas chief of staff. Akin Gump is lucky to have him, Vela was quoted as saying in the firms press release about the hiring.

Rep. Filemon Vela's (D-Texas) filed this statement of recusal regarding Akin Gump with the House Committee on Ethics in January.

Original post:

Texas Democrat Filemon Vela, Who Already Said He Would Not Seek Reelection, Will Resign Early From Congress - Forbes

Elon Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, admitted to feeling lonely at times during a recent interview with Mathias Dpfner, the CEO of Insider's parent company, Axel Springer.

"There are times when I feel lonely," Musk told Dpfner at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California. "I'm sure there are times when everyone is lonely. But it's pretty basic."

He added, "Say if I'm working on the starship rocket and I'm just staying in my little house by myself, especially if my dog is not with me, then I feel quite lonely because I'm just in a little house by myself with no dog."

The Tesla CEO reportedly lives in a Casita, a $50,000 375-square-foot tiny home that he rented from Space X in Boca Chica, Texas.

"Only house I own is the events house in the Bay Area," Musk tweeted last year. "If I sold it, the house would see less use unless bought by a big family, which might happen someday."

In addition, Musk and the singer Grimes split after being together for three years. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Grimes said that Musk "lives at times below the poverty line," adding that she felt "trapped between two worlds," as Insider reported.

"To the point where I was like, can we not live in a very insecure $40,000 house? Where the neighbors, like, film us, and there's no security, and I'm eating peanut butter for eight days in a row?" the musician said.

During the interview, Dpfner asked Musk about his biggest hope to which he responded, "is that humanity creates a self-sustaining city on Mars."

Link:

Elon Musk reveals 'there are times when I feel lonely' in interview - Insider

Strangers frequently text Evan Wood, asking if he wants to sell his South Padre Island condo, which has a direct view of Elon Musks Texas spaceport 9.6 kilometres away. Theres no way Id even contemplate that, said Wood, an Austin-based software engineer and space aficionado. To him, what Musks SpaceX is doing at its launch facility near the Gulf of Mexico is mind-blowing.

Over in Brownsville, the first semblance of civilisation you hit when exiting the barren 32km road from SpaceXs Starbase, similar tales are common. Bruno Zavaleta, a local real estate agent, had one client drive 16 hours from Atlanta and snap up two properties in cash the day he arrived. That buyer is now under contract for two more homes that are being built in a development called Palo Alto Groves, which touts its location as home of Elon Musks SpaceX Control Center.

These types of things didnt used to happen in Cameron County, affectionately referred to as the 956 (its area code) by locals, which has the kinds of small towns where everyone knows everyone, one in four people lives in poverty and children often grow up to leave and never come back. Now money and people are pouring into the Texas border region, thanks to the worlds richest man and his promise of a space revolution.

SpaceX has been in the area for years. But the craze really intensified, as these things do with Musk, after a tweet: Please consider moving to Starbase or greater Brownsville/South Padre area in Texas, Musk wrote in March 2021 to his millions of followers, 10 minutes before he promised $10m to Brownsvilles downtown revitalisation and $20m to its Cameron County schools.

Overnight our market went nuts, said Laurie Howell, a real estate agent in the South Padre area who sold Wood his condominium. One tweet it changed everything.

Almost a year later, the Cameron County economy has been transformed by Musk supporters, space junkies and investors betting on his name. Zavaleta says it was that tweet that spurred his client to jump in his car and buy Brownsville houses. The city located on the Mexico border, with a $39,000 median household income has a new identity as the gateway to Mars. Some locals are embracing the opportunity. Others are protesting the influx of wealth, fearing that the future of the area doesnt include them.

So goes the power of Musk, the rare billionaire whose fame and mystique are untethered to his net worth (now at $216bn, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index). He tweets, and 77-million people listen many of them diehard fans, and others who are simply aware of his ability to move markets and act accordingly. When Musk tweets a picture of a Shiba Inu, someone buys cryptocurrency based on the dog breed. When Musk tweets that people should move to Brownsville, someone drives 16 hours to South Texas and buys four homes.

Across Cameron County, the Musk effect has been profound. New businesses are given names such as Launchpad Crossing and The Moon Rock; existing spots are flaunting portraits of Musk and spaceships on merchandise, or creating products such as a 2kg SpaceX burger thats out of this world. The local schools are tailoring childrens educations to the billionaires interests spaceships, electric cars and solar energy to create a pipeline of skilled workers for his companies, said Juan Chavez, director of the career and technical education programme for Brownsville schools.

Aerospace-related companies such as flying car company Paragon VTOL, the Space Channel and venture capital firm Spaced Ventures are moving to the area. Its like were going from the Flintstones to the Jetsons, said Felipe Romero, director of communications and marketing for Brownsville, the countys largest city. Musk is becoming an outsize presence across Texas, moving to a home near SpaceXs Boca Chica site and bringing Teslas headquarters to Austin. Outside the city, hes building a Gigafactory thats 23% larger than the US Pentagon, and plans to eventually employ more than 20,000 people to build Teslas Model Y and Cybertruck. That growth is contributing to a boom in Austin, where legions of tech workers are pouring in to take advantage of new jobs and cheaper real estate than places such as Silicon Valley.

But Brownsville, population 187,000, is quite different from the bustling state capital. Its one of the poorest places in the country, with its quiet downtown marked by rundown thrift shops, empty storefronts, and now, two colourful murals funded by Musk. Almost 94% of residents are Hispanic or Latino, and until SpaceX broke ground in the area in 2014, its economy was almost exclusively characterised by its port and cross-border activity. Tensions have flared in the past few weeks alone. In late February, one of the Musk murals was vandalised with the words gentrified and stop SpaceX. It was the culmination of months of complaints about the bright pink painting because, people said, it doesnt reflect Brownsville culture and it was done by a Los Angeles artist instead of a local. Mayor Juan Trey Mendez, who has posted pictures of himself smiling with Musk on social media, was criticised for putting a mug shot of the woman arrested for the graffiti on his Facebook page and noting her opposition to SpaceX.

The success of Cameron Countys great pivot largely hinges on the success of SpaceX, which has, in Musks own words, a genuine risk of bankruptcy. The billionaire held an event at Starbase in February with much fanfare, telling a crowd that he expected Starship to be ready for a launch in a couple of months. The 120m-tall spacecraft that Musk envisions will one day carry people to Mars provided a dramatic backdrop. Real estate investors are betting that once the rocket succeeds, tourists will flock to watch the blast offs and they will need a place to stay. Then there are the SpaceX employees who moved to the region. Howell, the South Padre area agent, said her client base has partially switched from second-home-buying Winter Texans to 20- and 30-somethings buying houses for the first time because theyre going to work for the company.

The median price of a home in Brownsville soared 21% to $185,000 in 2021, according to the local board of realtors. In South Padre Island, it was a 29% increase to $330,000. Even with the sharp jumps, those values are still low compared with the national median house price of $350,000, and are particularly inexpensive for the types of people investing in the region. For many residents, though, that price point is out of reach. In 2019, Ramiro Gonzalez was looking and says he was overwhelmed with options in his $200,000 price range. Gonzalez, a registered nurse who lives with his parents, son, brother and niece in a one-storey home near the airport, said he put off buying a place of his own because he didnt expect the market to change so dramatically.

Now I cant because its so expensive, said Gonzalez, adding that now the types of homes he was looking at are going for $350,000 and there are hardly any on the market. Howells brother Larry Hodgson is hoping to capitalise on some of that demand for hotel space and has partnered with local developer Katherine Zeigler to build Launchpad Crossing, an 8ha commercial park that will include a convenience store and fuel station, restaurants, retail shops and one or two hotels. Hodgson said his nephew, who helps clear SpaceX debris following launches, has been in touch with the companys travel and lodging team and they told him, Build it and well fill it.

Despite SpaceXs effect on the local economy, theres little sign of the new employees. Unlike in other instances of techies invading small towns, crowding their coffee shops and trashing their nature trails, SpaceX employees havent had the same effect on Cameron County. Outside Starbases campus, which is insular, they are not all that visible. Theyre too busy working, said Howell, laughing. Its also unclear just how many SpaceX employees there are in Cameron County. Helen Ramirez, deputy city manager of Brownsville, estimates about 2,000 jobs, with many of them being filled by locals. It seems everyone in the city knows someone who knows someone who works at the company. SpaceX has more than 70 job listings on its website in Brownsville, from engineers to a human resources manager, sous chef and barista.

News Summary:

Continued here:

Musk Tweets and Texas Gateway to Mars Changes Forever - BollyInside

While Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is outspoken and can rub many people the wrong way on a regular basis, there's no doubt he's achieved extreme success. That said, he's arguably just beginning his interesting journey, with grand plans for an epic future. According to a new study, Musk could become the first trillionaire as soon as 2024.

Predictions such as this are hard to make, and they should remain as predictions until they actually come true, if ever. However, years ago, there were predictions that Tesla would eventually become a trillion-dollar company. Back in 2018, Musk himself told CNBC:

I actually see the potential for Tesla to become a trillion-dollar company within a 10-year period.

Of course, many people pushed back against the prediction, with some predicting that Tesla would be bankrupt much sooner. Interestingly, Musk's prediction of Tesla becoming a trillion-dollar company by 2028 was right and wrong. This is because, it happened in 2021, seven years ahead of the prediction, though he did say, "within a 10-year period." Musk responded to the news with just two "words."

As Tesla grows and its stock rises, Musk becomes more wealthy. However, despite his global public appearances and private jet trips across the globe, people who are close to him have shared that he doesn't really put an emphasis on wealth or make a point to live in luxury. The CEO sold his expensive homes in California and now lives in a small home in Texas.

Musk's ex-girlfriend Grimes, with which he now has two children, has said that he "lives at times below the poverty line." She even added that he wouldn't buy a new mattress when she found that it had a hole in it. Instead, he suggested that she go get her own mattress from her house and bring it over to replace the one with the hole. Grimes said in an interview with Vanity Fair:

"Bro does not live like a billionaire. Bro lives at times below the poverty line. To the point where I was like, can we not live in a very insecure $40,000 house? Where the neighbors, like, film us, and there's no security, and I'm eating peanut butter for eight days in a row?"

Musk is known for keeping most of his money tied up in Tesla's stock, and when he does have cash on hand, he often reinvests it in his companies while also giving to charity.

With all of that said, according to a new study published byTipalti Approve, crunching the numbers reveals that Musk could become the world's first trillionaire as soon as 2024. Our friend at Teslarati citedForbes' Real Time Billionaires list stating that Musk's current net worth is estimated at over $260 billion.

The information from the study was published by Yahoo! Finance. The Approve report claims:

Since 2017, Musks fortune has shown an annual average increase of 129%, which could potentially see him enter the trillion-dollar club in just two short years, achieving a net worth of $1.38 trillion by 2024 at age 52. SpaceX generates massive incomes by charging governmental and commercial clients to send various things into space, including satellites, ISS supplies, and people.

There are certainly other billionaires who are expected to eventually become trillionaires. However, based on the numbers and current trajectory, Musk will likely get the honor ahead of his peers.

We encourage you to get out your crystal ball and let us know when and if you think Musk will actually become a trillionaire. Will he be the first? Start a conversation in the comment section below.

Visit link:

Tesla's Elon Musk May Be The World's First Trillionaire By 2024 - InsideEVs

ELON Musk's megarocket that will eventually blast humans to Mars could make its first orbital test flight in just two months.

The SpaceX founder said the Starship launch will "hopefully" go ahead in May.

1

He wants to use the rocket to send people to the Red Planet by 2050.

It's designed to be fully reusable and launches on top of a giant booster called Super Heavy.

But the orbital test flight still needs to be approved by authorities before it's good to go.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is yet to reveal results from its environmental assessment.

It's expected to be released in less than a week, on March 28.

"First Starship orbital flight will be with Raptor 2 engines, as they are much more capable & reliable," he tweeted.

"Well have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test."

The huge rocket is under development at the SpaceX test facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

SpaceX has been working on it for the past few years.

It comes after Musk, 50, recently revealed that the launch would face slight delays as SpaceX shifts focus, dedicating more resources to fighting Russian cyberattacks on Starlink satellites in Ukraine.

Several SpaceX Starlink terminals were sent to Ukraine after its Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called Musk out for not helping during the invasion, which has disrupted the country's internet service.

Musk later tweeted that the move would likely make Starlink a huge target for Russian cyberattackers.

Who is Elon Musk?

Here's what you need to know...

Controversial billionaire Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971.

As a 12-year-old child he taught himself computer programming and sold the code of a video game to a PC magazine for $500 (300).

At 17, he moved to Canada to study, before gaining two degrees in physics and business at theUniversity of Pennsylvania.

At the age of 24 he moved to California to start a Ph.D. in applied physics and material science at Stanford University - but left the programme after just two days to pursue other projects.

Now 50, he is the founder and CEO ofSpaceX, co-founder, CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors, co-founder and chairman of SolarCity, co-chairman of Opan AI, co-founder of Zip2 and founder of X.com, which merged with PayPal.

He's also working on a human brain chip project called Neuralink.

Musk's stated aim is to reduce global warming and save humans from extinction by setting up a colony on Mars.

The billionaire inventor is also working on the world's largest lithium-ion battery to store renewable energy.

In other news, the new Harry Potter video gameHogwarts Legacywill feature some familiar faces despite being set hundreds of years before the majority of characters were even born.

A major Mars mission to find out whether life ever existed on the planet could bedelayed by up to six yearsat best, as Europe scrambles to replace Russian parts.

Internet users have been urged not to use a popular piece ofanti-virus softwareover fears it could be exploited by the Kremlin to spy or launch cyberattacks.

And Instagram could be planning to bring back a way to see what yourfriends likeon the platform.

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk

More:

Elon Musk sets date for 1st spaceflight with Starship megarocket that will one day take astronauts to Mars... - The US Sun

SpaceX is gearing up for the first orbital test flight of its huge Starship Mars rocket, as new photos show.

"Starship full stack propellant load testing at Starbase," the company wrote on Twitter on Friday (March 18), referring to its South Texas facility near the Gulf Coast village of Boca Chica. The post included images of a fully stacked Starship prototype, the tallest launch vehicle ever built.

SpaceX hopes to attempt Starship's first orbital test flight soon but is awaiting a positive result from a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) environmental review.

The review has been delayed several times and is now expected to come out no earlier than March 28, due to increased consultations and the large number of public comments, the FAA has said.

Related: SpaceX's Starship will reach orbit this year on road to Mars

Starship consists of a giant first-stage booster called Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship. SpaceX is developing the system to take people and cargo to Mars, the moon and other distant destinations.

This isn't the first time this Starship pair Booster 4 and Ship 20 have been stacked. SpaceX has assembled the duo several other times, including earlier this year, to perform fit checks and other procedures.

While Starship is still in the testing phase, it has attracted industry attention. The system has been tapped to help land astronauts on the moon as part of NASA's Artemis program.

Development of Starship as NASA's initial crewed lunar lander was delayed by seven months, however, in part due to a now-overturned legal protest by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company. NASA's inspector general now warns that a NASA crewed moon landing is likely now possible in 2026 at the earliest, a year later than the timeline the agency has been targeting.

Starship has also been tapped as one of the vehicles of the Polaris Program, which is a privately funded series of space missions organized by billionaire Jared Isaacman. Isaacman, the founder of payment provider Shift4, is best known for commanding the Inspiration4 mission to Earth orbit with an all-civilian crew in 2021.

An independently funded billionaire mission from Yusaku Maezawa, called dearMoon, is scheduled to use a Starship to fly nine people around the moon. Maezawa said as late as last year that he hopes to do that flight in 2023. There's no official word yet on whether the FAA's lengthened review has affected the target launch date.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter@howellspace. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcomor Facebook.

Read the original post:

See SpaceX's Starship Mars rocket fully stacked for testing on the pad (photos) - Space.com

Elon Musk has for years been telling anyone who will hear him and plenty who would prefer not to that he intends to colonize Mars. On a podcast earlier this year, Musk said that his SpaceX ships would start transporting people to Mars within ten years. The best-case scenario, he said, was a mere five years.

Musk says that he is intent on colonizing Mars because a multi-planetary existence is the only hope for humanity after we render Earth inhabitable. But in his headlong rush to colonize another planet, what Musk has actually done, according to a number of activists and residents, is colonize a small border city in South Texas.

Brownsville, Texas, is one of the poorest cities in the country. The poverty rate is nearly 30 percent overall, and higher for children. Nearly 35 percent of residents under sixty-five years of age are without health insurance. The city was recently ranked as the unhealthiest in the country, with high rates of diabetes among other illnesses. Internet connectivity is a problem. The border militarization of the area following the attacks of September 11 hamstrung the economy the city shares with Matamoros, its sister city in Mexico. The challenges are numerous, and, in a sense, unsurprising. Brownsville is almost 94 percent Hispanic and Latino, its history studded with episodes of colonization and disinvestment.

Despite all of that, Brownsville isa remarkable place. Set on a beautiful stretch of the Gulf Coast, its a culturally rich city that has resisted assimilation into the American mainstream. The first time I really left Brownsville, I left for about six months for some internships, and I remember, almost a week in, I was like, Im ready to go back, says Emma Guevara, an organizer with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network.

Now Brownsvilles future may be out of its hands, and in Musks instead.

Musk began looking for a site to base his space travel project in 2011, somewhere near the equator and a large body of water. Sites in Florida and Georgia were reported as potential options. But in 2012, it was reported that a parcel of land near Boca Chica Beach, some twenty miles east of Brownsville on the Gulf Coast, was a leading candidate for the facility. That was enough for the Texas Legislature to spring into action,passing a $15 million incentive package and a bill to allow the temporary closure of state beaches during rocket launches to try to lure Musk. Cameron County kicked in a ten-year property tax abatement.

While the state maneuvered, SpaceX did too, buying real estate around the site and buying out homeowners in nearby Boca Chica Village. In 2014, SpaceX made the announcement: they were officially coming to South Texas.

Many were excited. We grew up in school being promised that this was going to be amazing, a saving grace to the Valley, says Caelan Mitchell-Bennett, who grew up in Brownsville. This was all that we were good for. This was what was going to lift us out of poverty: the worlds richest man wanted to live here. To the poorest city in America, thats everything.

From the beginning, it was clear that Musk thought little of the people and the culture he was joining. In 2018, Musk paid tribute to Brownsvilles rich history thusly: Weve got a lot of land with nobody around, and so if [a rocket] blows up, its cool.

For Juan Mancias, chair of Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe of Texas, its difficult to miss how the logic of colonialism suffuses SpaceXs presence in the Rio Grande Valley. If Musk imagines there is no one and nothing on Mars, that it is simply unclaimed land waiting for humanity to wring some value out of it, he seems to imagine Brownsville similarly. Theyve got this invader mentality, Mancias said, where the weaker people are just going to be decimated, and they consider themselves stronger because they have the money.

Musk has long said that his intention is to terraform Mars to transform the planet, where the average temperature is -81 degrees, so it resembles Earth and is similarly habitable. Terraforming comes from science fiction, and the term is primarily used to refer to altering other planets. But in his book The Nutmegs Curse, the Indian author Amitav Ghosh writes that there is no intrinsic reason why the concept of terraforming should not be applicable to planet Earth.

Musk is seeking, in a way, to terraform Boca Chica and Brownsville, to make this area of South Texas more supportive of the forms of human life Musk and SpaceX executives are willing to see and able to comprehend.

In August 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, SpaceX added a job listing to its website seeking a resort development manager for Boca Chica. The manager would be responsible for supervising the construction of a luxury resort where space tourists those taking trips to Mars and the Moon in a SpaceX rocket ship or simply taking in the spectacle from Earth could stay in comfort and style. SpaceX is committed to developing this town into a 21st-century spaceport, the listing read.

Future plans aside, SpaceX has already shown flagrant disregard for the land and people of South Texas. SpaceX rockets have exploded on multiple occasions, leaving tidal flats and peoples front yards alike covered with debris. Noise and light pollution are constants. A liquified natural gas project intended to eventually transport 4 million tons of gas annually has residents nervous as well.

All of that land is being destroyed for buildings and launchpads to be built, Guevara said. There have been a lot of issues with ocelots being hit by cars because of the road closures or the traffic in general, and a lot of issues with birds and pelicans being hit as well.

Then there is the beach. As the Texas Observers Gus Bova highlighted in the fall, Boca Chica Beach is not just any strip of sand. It is, for many in Brownsville and the surrounding area, a treasure: a place where generations of local families have gone to fish, picnic, engage in community cleanups, and unwind in the South Texas heat. The beach is also a sacred gathering and trading site for the areas indigenous peoples. But since SpaceX started launching rockets next door, people have increasingly been unable to access their public beach or, in a few cases, have gotten stuck on it.

Mitchell-Bennett said that, in February 2020, his father and sister were at the beach when a SpaceX prototype burst apart during a pressure test and the only road from the beach back to Brownsville was closed. Mitchell-Bennetts family members did not arrive home until 3 AM. Musk tweeted a video of the test failure with the caption, So . . . how was your night?

Under the terms of the original agreement, SpaceX is supposed to give two weeks notice if it wants to shut the beach down for testing and is only permitted to shut it down for three hundred hours per year. In practice, that three hundred hours has not been enforced, and the two weeks notice has at times turned into just a days notice or less. Guevara said that they often get text messages multiple times per day announcing that the beach is closed effective immediately.

For many in Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley, all of this inconvenience is a bargain worth making to have Musk bringing jobs, investment, and positive attention to a community and an area of the country that has for so long been neglected. For others, there is nothing new or exciting about a wealthy and powerful outsider bulldozing his way through this part of Texas in pursuit of more wealth and power.

What are we to them in the end aside from cheap labor? Its just insulting, said Michelle Serrano, a communications strategist with Voces Unidas RGV. Ultimately, what Brownsville is right now is not just militarized on all sides, its privatized on all sides. And we are just the workforce that is being utilized as a means to an end. Well fill in the gaps that nobody else wants to fill because weve done so forever.

SpaceX has hired its share of South Texans. But many of the jobs it offers, particularly the highest-paying jobs, require advanced degrees in a town where fewer than 20 percent of residents have graduated from college. As a result, many SpaceX employees have arrived in Brownsville from elsewhere in the country driving up housing costs in the city by nearly 25 percent in the last year alone. The Brownsville metropolitan area and the entirety of the Rio Grande Valley is already one of the least affordable places to live in Texas, a state that includes a capital city where rents rose 40 percent last year.

It appears that Musk and SpaceX are trying to change Brownsville via other avenues as well. Last year, shortly after tweeting out a plea for engineers, technicians, and builders to move to Brownsville and bring their friends along, Musk donated $10 million to Brownsville for ambiguous downtown revitalization. In furtherance of that goal, Musks foundation tossed more money to the city to hire a Los Angelesbased muralist who painted a massive six-thousand-square-foot mural on the side of the old Capitol Theater downtown centered around the letters BTX a moniker that Guevara said no one in Brownsville is familiar with.

The mural has continued to be a lightning rod in the new year. Just last week, a local activist and coworker of Guevaras was arrested for allegedly vandalizing the mural with the words Gentrified Stop SpaceX. The small act drew a significant response from Brownsvilles pro-SpaceX mayor Trey Mendez, who posted the activists mugshot to his public Facebook account and wrote that the City of Brownsville takes all crimes, especially those to city property, very seriously.

Others in Brownsville feel that there are more important matters to attend to than the public persecution of someone charged with a misdemeanor.

People see a billionaire coming in and trying to build stuff, and its bad news, Guevara said. Because weve come to learn that rich people showing up to our community usually doesnt mean good things for us and the only people who actually believe those things are the people who are usually richer than the rest of us and are deluded into thinking that they can reach that level of capital. Its very, very textbook.

Of the people whove moved to Brownsville to work at SpaceX in the last four years, Mitchell-Bennett says, They are somewhat hostile. The original SpaceX employees from when the first rocket pad was built called themselves Mudders, because, they say, When we got there, there was nothing but mud.

All of the investment from and excitement about Musk, from the remaking of Boca Chica to the downtown Brownsville mural, seem aimed at crafting a new urban identity unmoored from the experience of people with roots that run decades and centuries deep in the area.

Five hundred years ago, they showed up in this land here, Mancias said. They came here for one thing: to take resources and export them back to where they came from. Five hundred years later, its still happening.

Follow this link:

On His Way to Theoretically Colonize Mars, Elon Musk Is Actually Colonizing South Texas - Jacobin magazine

They say everything is bigger in Texas, and that holds true when discussing Teslas relationship with the State. Not only does Tesla already have a massive, yet unfinished, Gigafactory sitting southeast of downtown Austin that fits the narrative famous phrase, but the automaker also confirmed last night it would hold a Giga Fest event on April 7 at the new facility. In classic Tesla fashion, where everything is above and beyond, it could unintentionally be the largest barbeque in Texas state history, all held to celebrate one of the companys biggest accomplishments to date.

To celebrate the accomplishments of Tesla, the company has held a fair-like event at Gigafactory Berlin. The event in Texas will likely be similar to the Giga Fest event Tesla held in Germany last year, with twists that are sure to give a nod to the State of Texas and its citizens.

Last night, Musk confirmed the event would take place on April 7 in a Tweet, initially indicating the event would be held on April 1. A fan of humor, Musk may have realized April Fools was that day, shifting the Giga Texas event six days later to avoid any potential confusion.

In October, Musk hinted that Tesla could hold a large BBQ for fans, enthusiasts, and owners to attend, perhaps being the largest meetup of Tesla owners in history. In December, Musk confirmed Tesla would hold the event, but it would not happen until early 2022.

Tesla Giga Texas grand opening party schedule for early 2022

Tesla will have factory tours for the local community. The event at Gigafactory Berlin also included this for local residents, providing some fresh and exclusive looks at the interior portions of the facility. Teslas new vehicle colors and Berlin-built Model Y units were on display for the community to look over.

The Berlin event was limited to 5,000 people due to restrictions in Germany that stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic. This is not expected to happen in Texas as the state has been more lenient with mask mandates and other measures. However, there is no indication of how many people will be allowed at the event currently.

Gigafactory Texas will be one of Teslas greatest accomplishments when it finally opens. While Tesla awaits final certification of the Austin-made Model Y before beginning deliveries, massive developments are already emerging from the plant. Tesla confirmed recently that its new 4680 and structural battery packs will be included in new Model Y units that come from the factory, bringing a new battery and vehicle design to the market. Both developments were unveiled in late 2020 at Teslas Battery Day, and could be some of the most monumental in the automakers history.

Deliveries are expected to begin soon. Tesla Model Y units from the Texas factory were spotted on vehicle haulers earlier this week, giving the impression that the first 4680 and structural battery pack Model Y units are days or weeks away from being delivered to first customers.

Id love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at[emailprotected]. You can also reach me on Twitter@KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at[emailprotected].

Continued here:

Tesla confirms it will hold what could be the largest BBQ in Texas history - Teslarati

Elon Musk with Texas (iStock, Getty, Illustration by Shea Monahan for the Real Deal)

Elon Musk wants to take his Texas adventure three-dimensional in the air, on land and below the earth.

The California ex-pat appears interested in deploying his Boring Company to build experimental transit tunnels under part of the state, Bloomberg reported. His companies already build rockets and electric cars there.

Working out of Pflugerville, an Austin suburb of about 61,000 people, the Boring Company has filed permits for land it owns in Bastrop County, about 42 miles away. Both locations are about 30 miles from Austin, the site of Teslas Giga Texas factory. The permits are for a research and development site where Boring can fine-tune its tunnel-building operations, according to Bloomberg. Plans include housing for workers.

They also include as many tunnels as necessary, each 300 feet to 600 feet long. The company will dig tunnels with a boring machine called Prufrock, an improved version of the machine the company used to dig now operational tunnels under the Las Vegas convention center.

Three 40-foot grout silos, a 35-foot vertical storage system for belts that pull muck out of the tunnels, office trailers, a tented working area, portable bathrooms and a chain-link perimeter fence are also planned for the Texas compound. Ten prefabricated, 550-square-foot homes are planned for worker housing. A future caf and retail structure is shown on the plans but has not been submitted for permitting.

Boring has been pulling back on potential projects in Chicago, New York and California. Boring has also proposed digging a tunnel from the south end of Texas popular South Padre Island beach and national park site to a point on the north end of Boca Chica Beach, where SpaceXs Starbase production complex and launch site is located.

Contact Cindy Widner

[Bloomberg] Cindy Widner

More here:

Elon Musk wants to tunnel under Texas - The Real Deal