EV giant Tesla Inc TSLA said on Thursday that it has set up a new supercharger at Boca Chica Boulevard in Texas, near Elon Musk’s rocket manufacturing company’s Starbase facility.
What Happened: The new supercharger in Brownsville has 16 stalls and is located near SpaceX’s Starbase facility, where CEO Musk is attempting to ramp up tourism.
The new supercharger is nearly 19 miles from Starbase and has 16 stalls. Tesla also has another supercharger in Brownsville which is nearly 23 miles from Starbase and has 8 stalls.
Both the superchargers at Brownsville are available 24/7 with a maximum charging rate of 250kW.
Attempts To Boost Tourism: The new supercharger at Brownsville comes on the heels of hints that the company is trying to ramp up tourism at Starbase. Earlier this month, Musk detailed his vision to transform Starbase into a possible photography hotspot with old Starships lined closer to the fence and enabling space enthusiasts to capture pictures with them.
Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño, Jr. said in a report earlier this month that over 11,000 people visited South Texas for a single Starship launch, drawing over 20,000 tourists and 16,500 official visitors to the region in 2023. He now estimates the economic impact of tourism at Starbase to be over $99 million in 2025.
Why It Matters: All development and manufacturing of the company’s ambitious Starship launch vehicle currently takes place only at Starbase in Texas. However, last month, Musk took to social media and said the company aims to build two Starship towers at Cape Canaveral in Florida, hinting at plans to launch Starships from the state.
As of today, however, all the last four flight tests of the Starship were launched from Starbase.
While the spacecraft failed to reach space in the first flight, it reached space and exploded in the second test flight. During the third flight test, the spacecraft broke apart when re-entering Earth's atmosphere from space.
However, the fourth flight test earlier this month was a success, with the company checking all its test flight goals including reentry through Earth's atmosphere and a soft splashdown of the spacecraft in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX is expected to have at least six flights of the Starship this year, as per Musk's latest estimate from March.
NASA is currently relying on the success of Starship to land humans back on the moon. The last crewed lunar mission occurred in 1972 with Apollo 17. Since then, no crew has traveled beyond low-Earth orbit.
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