Communities Push Back against SpaceX in Tamaulipas
A Mexican conservation group says Elon Musk’s rocket launches from South Texas are killing turtles, damaging homes, and littering Tamaulipas beaches with debris.
Three miles south of Starbase, Texas, where SpaceX launches rockets into orbit, the beaches of Tamaulipas begin at the mouth of the Rio Grande. Further south along the water’s edge, generations of families from northern Mexico have spent Sundays on the shores of Playa Bagdad’s recreational area, renting small wooden palapas for shade. Local fishermen live off the seafood they catch nearby in the Gulf of Mexico. They sell their fried fish, spicy shrimp kabobs, and raw oysters to visitors who sunbathe and swim on the beach.
Many Tamaulipecos have grown up with fond memories of Playa Bagdad, and Jesús Elías Ibarra Rodríguez is one of them. Rodríguez is a Matamoros-based veterinarian and the founder and president of Conibio Global A.C., a nonprofit conservation organization based in the state of Tamaulipas.
For several years, residents of Brownsville and other border towns have protested losing access to public beaches and the harm to the environment and communities caused by many SpaceX rocket explosions. In August, several Texas border organizations demanded that the Federal Aviation Administration halt more rocket launches until a complete environmental impact statement is conducted.
A protest movement is also building in neighboring Mexico, Rodríguez said, as the number of launches and tests has increased. “We’ve been here years before SpaceX, working to conserve these precious ecosystems,” he said. “But everything is changing now. The beach is changing. Even people’s homes, old houses going back generations, are getting damaged from the launch vibrations.”
In 2019, SpaceX launched its first rocket prototype from Starbase, called Starhopper. Rodríguez said that during early tests, most noise and debris were contained north of the U.S.-Mexico border. But in recent years, SpaceX “began building rockets of great size, considered the largest rockets ever constructed on the planet.” It was around this time that communities in Tamaulipas began to feel the greater effects from the vibrations of engine tests and rocket launches.
A 2024 study from Brigham Young University found that the rocket launches at Starbase produced sound levels similar to “a rock concert or chainsaw” up to six miles away. The data also showed the blasts were powerful enough to cause structural damage to nearby homes and buildings.
Concerns increased in Mexico as residents in Tamaulipas began to find industrial debris on the beach, some labeled with the names of manufacturers of materials used in the space industry. “They started letting debris fall into Mexican territory,” said Rodríguez. “That was what really worried us, alarmed us, and upset us.” Rodríguez says that his organization has documented debris from SpaceX rocket launches along a 40-kilometer stretch of Tamaulipas beach.
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said in June that the federal government was looking into a possible lawsuit against SpaceX based on damage sustained in the region from rocket launches. That same month, El País reported that Elon Musk had reached out to the Mexican government in the days after Sheinbaum’s comment for help in recovering any debris found in Tamaulipas that might still belong to the company.
Rodríguez says that Sheinbaum has assigned a local task force that is now present during launches along with Conibio staff and will soon make available a special team of divers to prepare reports on any major debris that is still under Mexican waters.
Rodríguez says that Conibio, which partners with federal conservation programs, expects to see the loss of more endangered turtles because of launches from Starbase. “It’s like launching bombs on their habitat,” said Rodríguez. “You have the sound and vibration of the explosions, and you have tons of millions of little pieces of plastic that are bait for them. And we worry about sea life in general consuming all that.”
Conibio reports that some 900 endangered turtles have died this year because they were trapped in their underground nests by compacted sand from Starbase launch and test vibrations, including from an accidental explosion of a rocket in June that occurred on the ground while it was still attached to its launch arm.
The 10th flight of Starship from Starbase was originally scheduled for Sunday, August 24, and Rodríguez organized the first major community demonstration against SpaceX on the waters of the Gulf of Mexico to be held on launch day.
According to Rodríguez and several Mexican media outlets present at Sunday’s demonstration, a helicopter with blue markings descended just meters above the protesters. “The gusts of wind generated by the rotors destabilized our vessels,” said Rodríguez. “We don’t know if their objective was to throw us off the boats.”
After SpaceX postponed its launch on Sunday, protesters returned Monday for another launch attempt. This time, a helicopter with red markings cruised over them at a safer distance before the launch attempt was again postponed.
At the protest and later on social media, participants in the demonstration said the helicopter with red markings belonged to Musk. Rodríguez contacted officials at the U.S. consulate in Matamoros about the flyovers but received no response.
SpaceX said publicly that they had delayed the launch on Sunday because of “ground system issues,” providing an update the next day that a “liquid oxygen leak at the Starship launchpad” had prevented the launch. The company said unfavorable weather conditions had caused Monday’s delays.
On Tuesday, Conibio and the demonstrators were again protesting on the beach, during what was now a third launch attempt by SpaceX.
Rodríguez said he was then notified by “a member of a U.S. agency” that Conibio was demonstrating inside a danger zone set by SpaceX. Rodríguez said the demonstration was held well outside the restricted launch boundaries provided in a public notice by the Mexican Navy on August 15. Still, Rodríguez decided to cancel the protest on the water. SpaceX launched later that day.
According to public FAA records, the helicopter with red markings captured on video during the demonstration is registered to Onyx Aviation, a private company based in Needham, Massachusetts, that describes its private chartered flights as “glamorous and exciting.”
The company appears to cater to at least some government clients. In 2024, Florida-based Republican representative Cory Mills can be seen in an identical helicopter with the same tail number rescuing U.S. citizens in Haiti as the country’s government collapsed.
The Border Chronicle reached out to SpaceX and was unable to confirm that the helicopters were associated with the company. Aircraft that appear to be the same as the helicopter with red markings can be seen in Reuters photos from that day cruising near Starbase. The green helicopter has a private owner but is registered to the FAA under a private trust managed by the Salt Lake City–based Bank of Utah. SpaceX did not respond by publication time to a request for comment about the helicopters or the environmental effects of launches in Tamaulipas.
While some community members in South Texas have rallied behind the Starbase project in hopes of jobs and economic benefits, that tradeoff does not exist for people in Tamaulipas.
“People here are very unhappy with this,” said Rodríguez. “There are hundreds, even thousands of Mexicans who want to join in, come together, and show that Mexico is united and that we will demand change, that those rockets explode somewhere else.”
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