SpaceX Village @ Boca Chica, Texas

March 18, 2020

Amid all the distressing news, let’s take a moment to celebrate bold dreams and visions for the future with this design for SpaceX ‘s ‘Last Town Before Mars‘ on the south Texas coast.

Instead of scoping for a few hundred technicians, our plan lays out a vertical village for a few thousand people, developed over the next few decades of successful launches. It’s a small town to also welcome a community of supporters, fans, family, and future Mars migrants.

7-Star Send-Off

Such a journey merits a place to match the significance of pioneering a multi-planetary existence. As the last Earthly haven for the migrants before the grand expanse of space, a visionary community-building investment like this will inspire confidence in the endeavor.

Future migrants will appreciate the investment in the quality of the town’s design as they take the staggering leap to leave Earth. It’s a place where thousands of starships will be built to send all the people and cargo during each Earth-Mars orbital sync.

Extremophile Proximity Structures

The compact and vertical nature of the village will prepare migrants for the close quarters of their journey and future home. It’s also a living laboratory for the systems and technologies required to survive in challenging environments like the one found on Mars.

Local Food And Construction Materials

The mangrove farmstead will supply local food, using brackish-water-adapted plants and saltwater aquaculture to provide sustainable sources of fruits, vegetables, and protein. And of course, Boring Bricks will be the preferred construction material across all of Boca Chica.

Wildlife Protection

Along with other nature conservation efforts around the village, a squadron of aerial and ground-based autonomous drones will keep wildlife away from the launchpad area.

Features include:

Spaceport lounge and starship launch viewing platforms on top of the tall building roofs
Climbing walls and alpine paths on the building facades;
Sports such as kayaking, volleyball, cable wakeboarding, fat-tire beach biking, and a Neveplast ski hill.

Solar, Water, and Shade

Tesla solar roofs will be used across the entire project for industrial and domestic electricity and rainwater collection. The Tejano/Mexican-inspired, brightly colored, courtyarded buildings along the village lanes provide plenty of shade for the long tropical summer.

We owe debts of gratitude to people like Elon Musk who push us forward–through their willingness to take the arrows that come along with looking so far over the distant horizon. They inspire us to challenge what’s possible both here on Earth and out amongst the stars.

These pages explore experimental, hypothetical, forward-leaning design concepts. We mean no offense by these ideas, and we can assure you that they don’t currently exist…yet.

Check out our other Property Experiments here.