According to a Houston Chronicle story about the Texas city, SpaceX is now Brownsville’s “largest private employer,” after investing $430 million in operations in 2021.
Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez said on Thursday at the “State of the City” event that the corporation plans to provide $885 million in gross economic production to Cameron County.
Elon Musk’s space company now employs over 1,600 people at its Boca Chica facility, which is producing the Super Heavy rocket and the Starship spacecraft.
“Not only have they become our largest private employer,” Mendez said, “and they’ve recently added a substantial presence within the city for various operations.”
On its website, SpaceX has advertised multiple engineer job positions in Brownsville. According to the mayor, the corporation spent $500,000 to upgrade the 46,000 square foot facility it leased at the Brownsville Aerospace Industrial Park.
Elon Musk said last month: “We’ll have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test.”
However, SpaceX must first obtain approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and a license before launching into orbit. The FAA just postponed the site’s environmental review for the third time, to April 29.
SpaceX intended to expand its Brownsville facility and add another launchpad, but the US Army Corps put the plans on hold earlier this month while it gathered additional information.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (doing business as SpaceX) is a Hawthorne, California-based aerospace manufacturer, space transportation services provider, and communications company. Elon Musk created SpaceX in 2002 with the purpose of lowering space transportation costs so that Mars may be colonized. The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, as well as various rocket engines, the Cargo Dragon, crew spacecraft, and Starlink communications satellites, are all manufactured by SpaceX.
The first privately funded liquid-propellant rocket to reach Earth orbit, the first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft, the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station, the first vertical take-off and vertical propulsive landing for an orbital rocket, the first reuse of an orbital rocket, and the first private company to send astronauts to orbit and to the International Space Station are among SpaceX’s accomplishments. The Falcon 9 series of rockets has been flown over a hundred times by SpaceX.
