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SpaceX Starship-Super Heavy tourism promoted by Visit South Padre Island
This Visit South Padre Island promotional video encourages individuals to journey to the South Texas resort city to observe SpaceX Starship launches.
Provided by Visit South Padre Island
- SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket launches are anticipated to attract large crowds to Florida’s Space Coast, just like NASA’s area shuttle period.
- High-profile launches enhance Brevard County’s economic system by tourism, with guests spending a median of $231 per day.
- While Texas launches are a novelty, Florida is making ready for as much as 120 annual Starship launches, which officers estimate will create jobs and billions in funding.
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas — Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated 220,000 spectators nonetheless swarmed Space Coast beachside and riverfront rocket-viewing websites in May 2020 to see America’s first crewed launch for the reason that finish of the area shuttle program — although NASA had urged individuals to remain dwelling and watch on TV as an alternative.
Experts say related crowds might converge for SpaceX’s historic preliminary launches of Starship-Super Heavy — essentially the most highly effective rocket system in world historical past — from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
“Just given the scale of it and the curiosity of the factor, I believe the crowds might be just like the previous days of the shuttle launches,” said Don Platt, director of the Florida Institute of Technology’s Spaceport Education Center in Titusville.
“There’s going to be a huge buzz about something that big. Especially with the unknowns about it, and just the overall thing about it being ‘the Mars rocket,’ “ Platt said.
In the meantime, SpaceX crews are prepping to launch the 11th Starship flight test from Boca Chica, Texas. The launch window opens at 7:15 p.m. EST Monday, Oct. 13. Towering more than 400 feet high, the Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster surpass even the Saturn V that transported NASA’s Apollo astronauts to the moon.
In Florida, SpaceX is seeking regulatory and environmental approvals to start launching up to 44 Starship-Super Heavy tandems per year from KSC, along with up to 76 annual launches from adjacent Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
When? Construction is underway on Starship facilities at the Cape and no Florida timetable has been set. During an Aug. 22 Space Coast Symposium speech, SpaceX Vice President of Launch Kiko Dontchev said “you are going to get a vetted machine that reveals up able to occasion.”
“There’s some thought like, ‘We’re simply sort of dashing into this Starship-in-Florida factor.’ But we have truly been engaged on this drawback for perhaps six or seven years now,” Dontchev informed the viewers.
Space Coast Office of Tourism knowledge reveals high-profile launches enhance Brevard County’s economic system: assume lodging, eating and drinks, recreation and leisure, and retail procuring. The company’s launch crowd estimates are based mostly on cellphone GPS knowledge.
The closely attended May 2020 Demo-2 liftoff launched on a Saturday afternoon, drawing cheering crowds chanting “USA! USA!” to the Westgate Cocoa Beach Pier and other locales. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft carried NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurleyto the ISS from American soil for the first time since 2011.
Other milestone missions, such as NASA’s November 2022 Artemis I moon-rocket launch from KSC, tend to draw 100,000 to 200,000 visitors, Space Coast Office of Tourism spokesperson Meagan Happel said. A large throng watched that mighty Artemis I rocket liftoff, even though it rumbled off the pad at 1:47 a.m. on a Wednesday.
Happel mentioned crowd estimates don’t embody native residents who watched these launches at in style viewing websites; kids who wouldn’t have cellphones; or individuals with worldwide telephones.
A 2023 Space Coast Office of Tourism survey of in a single day guests who primarily traveled to Brevard to see a launch confirmed the common occasion dimension was 2.8 individuals; common size of keep was 4.8 nights (scrubs might have been an element); and every customer spent a median of $231 per day. Average spending per occasion: $3,101.
Rocket launch visitors primarily visited Cocoa Beach-Cape Canaveral (42%) and Titusville (23%), with Melbourne Beach-South Beaches ranking third at 9%.
Beyond tourism, state officials estimate SpaceX bringing Starships to Florida’s Space Coast will create at least $1.8 billion of infrastructure investment and about 600 new full-time jobs by 2030.
On Sept. 3, the Federal Aviation Administration conducted a virtual public meeting on potential Starship environmental impacts at pad 39A at KSC. That’s when photographer Max West, who has a YouTube channel and described himself as “pro-SpaceX,” said he plans to move to Florida in the coming years to capture images of Starship launches.
“I am unable to wait. It’s a job for me. And it is bringing much more jobs all the way down to the Florida space. And I say that extra launches could be good,” West said.
South Padre Island promoting Starship launches
By contrast, rocket launches remain novelty events in sparsely populated, southernmost Texas, where SpaceX continues developing its massive Starship manufacturing and launch facilities in Boca Chica.
Here, the remote Rio Grande Valley lacks the generations of rocketry history accumulated on Florida’s NASA-centric Space Coast. The primary Starship launch viewing area for spectators is South Padre Island. Reminiscent of a mini-Cocoa Beach in many respects, the barrier-island resort town lined with oceanfront condominiums is home to about 2,100 permanent residents across 3.7 square miles.
Launch-viewing statistics rank on a micro-scale compared with Brevard. During the five-day span from Oct. 11-15, 2024, an estimated 20,660 people came to town for Starship’s landmark fifth flight test, per Visit South Padre Island data based on cellphone GPS data.
Visitation peaked just shy of 7,000 people on the Oct. 13, 2024, launch date, which was a Sunday morning. That’s when SpaceX crews made history when the “Mechazilla” catch tower’s metal arms caught a Super Heavy booster for the first time.
The overwhelming number of those visitors (18,835) were Texas residents. Most lived in the surrounding Rio Grande Valley (13,365 people), with San Antonio (1,349), Dallas-Fort Worth (1,029) and Houston (949) leading the “drive-market” cities. San Antonio, the closest of the three, is about a 4½-hour drive away.
“That enhance within the native economic system helps jobs, helps our island companies,” April Romero, Visit South Padre Island director of communications, said during an interview in her office.
“We’ve seen much more of our companions set up personal Tesla chargers, simply because we’re seeing an inflow of extra Teslas on the island. So it is little issues like that we are able to inform that SpaceX is making an impression, not simply on the native economic system however on infrastructure being modified,” Romero said.
Visit South Padre Island is touting Starship launches via promotional videos and social media, and the organization created a SpaceX launch viewing webpage. The organization recommends tourists to stay in town at least four days.
“We’ve seen much more SpaceX workers coming and visiting and staying on South Padre Island that hadn’t even heard of this vacation spot earlier than. So SpaceX has put us on a world highlight,” Romero mentioned.
Starship spectator stays in Texas, launches area firm
In a 2021 private transfer, area fan Paul Mamakos bought his Virginia dwelling and determined “perhaps it is time to make a change, somewhat than simply watch from the sidelines.” That March, he migrated to Boca Chica and spent a couple years filming and editing more than 1,900 videos of SpaceX’s Starship and Starbase-building activities — with some videos garnering hundreds of thousands of YouTube views.
Mamakos, a former NASA Ames Research Center intern and entrepeneur who founded a natural foods company, recalled how he started seriously thinking about moons with subsurface oceans during an inspirational walk past SpaceX’s futuristic facilities at Starbase. After conducting research and interviewing planetary scientists, he founded Space Ocean Corp., a tech startup aiming to extract and store water from those moons to supply deep-space missions.
Settling in, he moved into a recreational vehicle at the rural 13-acre Maker SpaceX Boca Chica ranch in November 2024 roughly 17 miles from Starbase. Since then, Space Ocean Corp. has formed a board of directors and inked letters of intent with a trio of fellow space exploration companies, with an eye set on developing in-space satellite refueling technology.
Chatting outside his RV at the ranch amid buzzing insects, Mamakos discussed space logistics near a 30-foot-tall aluminum-tubing art installation shaped like a SpaceX Starship nose cone. The sculpture sits on a small round island in a surrounding marsh. He gestured at nearby lily pads and aquatic vegetation.
“If we have been to gather this water and launch it into orbit, and supply it as a useful resource round Mars — that is what we’re making an attempt to do,” Mamakos said.
Back in the Sunshine State, Greg Autry is the associate provost for space commercialization and strategy at the University of Central Florida. He called Starship a key piece of an upcoming Cape Canaveral launch boom that will include United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rockets, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets, Firefly Aerospace and others — plus NASA’s Artemis program is rolling along.
“It’s simply a number of launches. I believe that is going to be large pleasure for the Space Coast. And I believe we’ll see one other sort of financial growth like we noticed a number of years in the past that drove up housing costs and the whole lot else,” Autry said
“I do know that will not make everyone glad,” he said, laughing. “But I believe it is, general, going to be an incredible factor for Central Florida.”
Among that next generation of rockets, Autry said Starship is “taking it to an entire nother degree” of payload quantity, potential financial improvement, and pleasure from the general public.
Commissioner: ‘What we seek is a reasonable middle ground’
Platt noted a key crowd difference between the shuttle days and today: Cape Canaveral’s dizzying launch rate has made most liftoffs seem routine to local residents. With orbital launches already up in the mid-80s this year, Florida’s Space Coast stands poised to blow past 2024’s short-lived record of 93 annual launches.
For example, Platt said NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 launch on Aug. 1 that sent four crew members to the ISS generated little buzz — and neither do SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets that lift off at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. But he said Starship should be a different beast.
Coupled with record-breaking launch activity at the Cape, the pending Starship-Super Heavy arrival at KSC generated hundreds of written statements from the public to the FAA. The overwhelming majority expressed concerns about an array of potential environmental impacts — particularly projected delays at Florida airports and Playalinda Beach closures at Canaveral National Seashore.
In a letter to the FAA, Brevard County Commissioner Katie Delaney said numerous businesses operating in and around KSC — including aerospace contractors, support vendors and marine-based operators — have reported operational disruptions tied directly to intensified launch cadence. These impacts include:
- Delayed or limited access to worksites because of expanded restricted zones.
- Interruptions to manufacturing, research and supply-chain activities from sudden launch rescheduling.
- Interference with coastal and marine operations caused by repeated maritime exclusion zones.
- Loss of productivity and revenue during extended safety stand-downs or access limitations.
Delaney asked the FAA to conduct a comprehensive review of the cumulative environmental, social and economic impacts of increasing launch frequencies in Brevard. She also requested a formal coordination framework with local governments, business leaders and affected communities.
“Of course, I help the area business. I simply actually really feel like there must be some steadiness between the standard of life and supporting this business that is so vital to our group,” Delaney said during the commission’s Sept. 23 final budget hearing.
Delaney said she hopes to find “a contented medium” between Starship operations and her District 1 involved constituents.
During that dialogue, Brevard County Commissioner Thad Altman mentioned he absolutely helps SpaceX: “The extra rockets launched and the larger, the higher.”
Altman said Wernher von Braun, the pioneering German rocket scientist who became chief architect of NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket, envisioned three Vehicle Assembly Buildings rather than today’s single 525-foot facility at KSC. Altman noted that rockets are taking flight in Virginia, Texas, New Mexico and Kwajalein Atoll, but Brevard’s infrastructure and geographic location make it uniquely qualified to launch large rockets.
“If we will survive as a Space Coast, I believe we have to help this effort to launch massive rockets,” Altman said.
For the latest news from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space. Another easy way: Click right here to join our weekly Space publication.
Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at [email protected]. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
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