 I wake up five times a night and stare out my window and that's all lit up and that amazes me. I feel like I'm in the middle of, yeah, science fiction. It's known as the southernmost tip of Texas, home to diverse wildlife and soon the Rio Grande Valley, maybe at the forefront of space exploration. Elon Musk recently said this launch site will be used to launch the rockets he hopes to one day land on Mars. I think we've got to protect the downside here and try to build that city on Mars as soon as possible and secure the future of life. I and many other people like me have come down here because of SpaceX. I think we're witnessing history. It literally pointed the camera in this direction and the following day I had thousands of people watching. We're back now with that backup plan for SpaceX, Boca Chica operations. Elon Musk may not be launching from Starbase after all. He's talking about moving more of these operations over to Florida. And I've wondered like what happens if it all comes crashing down and I don't even want to think about that. I feel like that would take away so much hope. Right now we're driving into Boca Chica. It's a small area just on the border of Mexico and Texas where SpaceX has set up its massive Starbase facility. Welcome to Starbase. In February I came down to see Elon Musk give a presentation about Starship. When I was here I stayed at this place called Rocket Ranch and I was very enamored with the community that's kind of risen up in the area. I've met a lot of people that have kind of uprooted their lives to come be near what SpaceX is doing. They don't work for SpaceX. They just want to be near here or they're documenting what they're doing or they're capitalizing on what they're doing. It feels like a very drastic move especially when SpaceX's presence here is kind of tenuous at the moment. SpaceX is under review by the Federal Aviation Administration. The SpaceX launch site is surrounded on all sides by protective wildlife properties. Some environmentalists are concerned about the long-term damage. So the fate of Boca Chica is kind of in the balance at the moment. Well let's start with the circus tour. That's a COPV tank by the way. Oh. Yeah so that might have landed here at some point. Really? Wait from a launch? Maybe. Oh my god. All right. I'm just going to be a little bit more patient anyway. Anthony Gomez moved here from Florida and manages Rocket Ranch. It's become something of a base camp for visiting SpaceX superfans. And a lot of us that are here didn't have a place to really call home when we got to Brownsville. We're from other places. We're trying to make this place our home too. These are the people that are definitely at home talking about Tesla and Dogecoin and Elon Musk. And people are just so tired of hearing that conversation. It's really kind of like a hub for dorks and we can really share our love for this place. We're certainly a venue for the lost children of Starbase. Today I think we have 25 here. Actually it's a pretty low number for these tours. We usually have 50 folks. So it gets filled up. These days Starbase is too quiet to attract many overnight visitors to the ranch. So Anthony operates bus tours of the facility to help get by. All right. They're on their way. Here come the kids. Everybody, welcome to the historic Rio Grande Valley. It is not unpoetic that we are at a frontier. I mean Mexico is right in front of us and it's not unpoetic that we have this new frontier of space that's just down the street from us. We have our production facility coming up on our left and we'll be rolling up into that site in just a few moments folks. Welcome to Starbase. This week is very important. There is currently environmental assessment that's taking place in this entire area to determine the validity of SpaceX's mission up here. Whether or not it's going to be too dangerous to have out here or whether or not it's going to land humans on Mars one day. We're all going to find out. So what we're seeing today is very privileged. No one's ever gotten this close in public to rockets that are currently being developed. This is the world's most advanced rocket being developed down the street in Brownsville. I often refer to it as a religious experience. It's not that far off. I personally believe this is somewhat like Noah's Ark. This is the ship that's going to allow us to take those first steps into space. Alright folks, this is our outpost observation area. You're welcome to walk around. This is where we're going to be seeing the launches from. You're welcome to join us if you buy a ticket. But you don't know when the next launch is. We can expect to have information on that in the next 24 hours. So we'll find out what the result of the environmental study that's being addressed by the FAA in the next 24 hours. And then at that point they'll determine whether this whole project is a go or not. The future of this site is actually at jeopardy. This potentially might be the last tour. We don't know. We just don't know if they could close this whole damn place down. The way people talk about Starbase, SpaceX fans anyway, they kind of have this magnetism toward it as if they are meant to be here. Like it's some kind of religious experience for them. I came here for the rockets. The first few weeks I was here I literally slept on the beach in a lawn chair because I didn't have this trailer. This is a really light trailer. I bought it just for this beach. I bought it just so I could drag it out here and just watch future happen. I come from the other side of the planet just to catch this inspiration. So you say in science I trust and this is truth. We've camped here for two weeks. I met Olga right here on the beach. It's become a community. And this is my last art project because Kali is one of my nicknames and I want to rave on Mars and I need the support from the people to rave on Mars because somehow I have to get there. And basically I would not like to ask money from Elon Musk because I would like to help him. With SpaceX they're very open about what they're doing. Where they test until they basically blow things up. I think that's very alluring to people because they can see what SpaceX is doing. They feel like they're along for the ride and they feel like these big ambitious things like going to the moon, going to Mars are right around the corner rather than decades off into the future. If I'm not sleeping, I'm working. SpaceX has taken every nook and cranny of my life. For instance last night I got a call around midnight, oh can you focus in on the camera, on the Sentinel camera, they're testing the gantry cranes. Can you zoom in over there and get a tighter shot? It can be a little cumbersome and a little irritating sometimes but I love my community. I like bringing it to them. So I do what I got to do to keep them happy. You know originally my YouTube channel was just all about spring break stuff, looking at bikinis, looking at pool parties and stuff like that. I was always looking to pump up my subscribers and viewership and as soon as SpaceX started testing I watched on the news and saw that they were getting ready to do the Hopper test and so I said well let me move the camera over there and see what happens. Immediately people just started watching and piling in by the hundreds. And within 24 hours I went from having about 900 subscribers to thousands every month. I think my biggest month was like 17,000 subscribers in one month. Once everybody saw, everybody wanted to do, wanted a part of it, a piece of the pie. And next thing you know we have tons of people out here every day taking photos, live videos. Mountain the elements all day every day so I try not to get the nicest gear out there but I get nice gear from a few years ago. I work for nasaspacepflight.com, the independent media organization where we cover everything and anything about space. So this is a medium shot of ship 20 and booster 4 in the background. I came down here once for a week last summer thinking I was just going to be down here for a little vacation. It was addicting and I couldn't leave. I actually ended up camping on the beach. It was probably the best six weeks of my life. I make sure that whatever I take is posted and consumed within a few minutes to keep things nice and fresh. Because who likes moldy bananas? I don't like moldy bananas. Always got to watch the views here and make sure you're not missing anything while you're driving by. We haven't had a launch in almost a year now and we lost a lot of viewership. It's a little disheartening to see people leave but I know eventually they'll be back, especially when things start to ramp up again, they'll be back. What would happen, how would you feel if SpaceX said, okay, Boca Chica's not happening, we're going to Cape Canaveral instead or they just completely stopped Starship? I'd probably vomit. Everybody's ready for another launch. Everybody's tired of waiting. So everybody wants to see that rocket go up in the air again. We all want to see it go up in the air again. Feel that rumble in our chests. My main ambition is to stream from space, whether it's from a spacecraft, the moon or Mars. I want to be in orbit somewhere, live streaming or even just recording video from up there. Here on Earth, I think I've accomplished what I've set to do, bringing all this live views to the world. Things come together pretty nicely. This was the spot. I moved down here and I stayed at this spot because of that view. Who wouldn't want to be? Are you not entertained? This is gorgeous. I lost a hundred pounds because I didn't eat because it was just so exciting and there's just so much stimulation and so much happening that I literally forgot to eat. Who needs a personal life? I don't have a personal life. My friends are my coworkers out here and every one of them will tell you I don't have a personal life. I like to say I'm recording history being made. We'll see if this even hits the history books, but hopefully it does. Everyone pretty much knows me at this point. I'm the bird lady, the crazy person that walks around these flats all the time. We used to have half a dozen or more pairs of snowy plovers and Wilson's plovers that nested in this area directly across from the launch pad. Over the years, that number has dropped down to last year and this year where we've only had one pair. I see the adult over there right in the road there. She's trying to lure us away from her nest. It should be right up here. The nest is right here. It's got three eggs. I don't see any signs of hatching yet. Snap a quick picture just so I know where this nest is next time and I can come check on it. People have confused me for SpaceX enthusiast every once in a while, think I'm one of them, but I'm like, no, I don't want anything to do with this. Like I'm just trying to count the birds. I don't have anything against space travel, space exploration. I just wish it wasn't happening here. Hold on to your butts. The FAA might take this away tomorrow, but we're here now and we can walk up to Starship and we can relish in the time that we have as a community. I've made so many friends here. You know, yeah, there's a little bit of fanaticism with all these people. I'm sure you guys have interviewed everybody that's down here has come off super culty or some form of like, he's the future. You know, like that kind of shit. But when everybody feels that way, you know, who cares? Do you think you would feel this way if it was say another US space company like United Launch Alliance or Blue Origin? That's funny. I have had that argument with myself and I have to be objective because I do have a bias, right? And I have to be aware of that. And you know, I'm not, I'm not ridiculous about it. Obviously like I feel like if it was, let's say if it was Bezos doing this, you know, I don't think they're far enough. I just have faith in Elon Musk and the things that he's done. I love this place. It's beautiful. I don't want concrete everywhere. I came here because I grew up in a city. This place is fantastic. Why would I want to destroy this? I want to preserve it. I don't want to destroy that, but I certainly don't want to be trapped in a place that I can't leave, you know, ever. Do you feel trapped on Earth? I think we've been, I think we've been grown to feel accustomed to the fact that we're trapped on Earth. You know, anything can happen. We have looming wars and people that are willing to destroy the entire world happening right now. You know, like that's totally possible. And I want to live in a world where there's at least a life raft. I have to admit, it's probably the best view anyone's going to get when this thing launches. Yeah, I'd be very heartbroken if this went very poorly. I feel like it would be the death of exploration and the death of that would be sad to me. You know, why is it so important to you that we send humans to other worlds and potentially have them living there? I think that it's important to not lose the story of humanity. I think it's worthy of being told elsewhere so that we can learn from the mistakes that we've made here. We have made many mistakes. So I think working on something, albeit something that's relatively morbid, like, you know, we might be done. I think that working on that problem allows us to focus on the fact that life is precious and we do have this really rare circumstance where we reside in this perfect ball that we're ruining on a regular basis. The fact that it could be taken away because people are greedy and because people are, they don't care about their own environment. They don't care about their own neighborhoods. That argument could be made about SpaceX where they are getting greedy and they're taking over an environment that we're trying to preserve. That's a good point. I don't know how much I could argue with that. I'd like to think that they're on my team so I feel better about it. Oh no. Lauren has news. This is where I get to find this out. It's going to be deleted again. I saw that coming. Another month, dude. Jesus Christ. Yikes. Wow. I don't know. Keep going. Just keep going forward. Like Nick does these bonfires out here and we go out and just hang out and talk crap and have a good time with it. Yeah, I'm busy day to day doing other stuff besides SpaceX. Yeah. That's it. I'm pretty sure that's all just part of the simulation. I watched everything, I mean continuously. I watched your broadcasts. Every once in a while I checked in on the FAA website and saw the damaging news. It'll happen at some point. I mean I believe, I seem to think, right? Yeah. I hope it does. Yeah, it wasn't in the greatest place for a second but it's like what are you going to do? It's like, yes, you're right. There has to be due diligence in the environment. We have to make sure that it's good. We have to make sure that it's safe. We have to make sure that it's not going to blow wind in the zone. Get it. I'm like sick of 60 balloons. What's not to love about this? When you have a group of people who is passionate about what's going on down here and just hanging out. Yeah, I still can't believe this is going on in our backyard. This is awesome. You know, wouldn't have it any other way. But the fact that this thing is our neighbor. It's the elephant in the room. It's always there. It's our friend that's in the corner. It's just hanging out, looking over us. And it feels pretty special.