Flight controllers celebrate the successful conclusion of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission in 1969 at Mission Control, Johnson Space Center, Houston.
More than 50 years after NASA established the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston to pursue human spaceflight, Texas has again become the epicenter of an emerging space industry. SpaceX, the brainchild of billionaire businessman Elon Musk, and Blue Origin, the private space venture of billionaire tech entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, have both hatched plans to launch commercial rockets from Texas sites.
In Cameron County, at the southernmost tip of Texas, the Boca Chica SpaceX facility aims to catapult up to 12 rockets a year into space — what Musk hopes is a precursor to endeavors like the colonization of Mars — starting in 2018. Meanwhile, the endeavors of Blue Origin are more mysterious, as the company has kept a low profile since it began building a launch site just north of Van Horn, a town of about 2,000 people deep in West Texas.
Some of the companies’ new neighbors are hopeful this public-to-private shift in Texas’ space exploration industry will bring new economic development and jobs to their regions. Others are skeptical, fearing the effects on beaches, wildlife and small-town life.
