SpaceX Starship-Super Heavy tourism promoted by Visit South Padre Island
This Visit South Padre Island promotional video encourages people to travel to the South Texas resort town to watch SpaceX Starship launches.
Provided by Visit South Padre Island
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas — Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated 220,000 spectators still swarmed Space Coast beachside and riverfront rocket-viewing sites in May 2020 to see America’s first crewed launch since the end of the space shuttle program — though NASA had urged people to stay home and watch on TV instead.
Experts say similar crowds could converge for SpaceX’s historic initial launches of Starship-Super Heavy — the most powerful rocket system in world history — from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
“Just given the size of it and the curiosity of the thing, I think the crowds could be similar to the old days of the shuttle launches,” said Don Platt, director of the Florida Institute of Technology’s Spaceport Education Center in Titusville.Â
“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’re going to get a vetted machine that shows up ready to party.”
“There’s some thought like, ‘We’re just kind of rushing into this Starship-in-Florida thing.’ But we’ve actually been working on this problem for maybe six or seven years now,” Dontchev told the audience.
Space Coast Office of Tourism data shows high-profile launches boost Brevard County’s economy: think lodging, dining and beverages, recreation and entertainment, and retail shopping. The agency’s launch crowd estimates are based on cellphone GPS data.
The heavily 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 Hurley to 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 said crowd estimates do not include local residents who watched those launches at popular viewing sites; children who do not have cellphones; or people with international phones.
A 2023 Space Coast Office of Tourism survey of overnight visitors who primarily traveled to Brevard to see a launch showed the average party size was 2.8 people; average length of stay was 4.8 nights (scrubs may have been a factor); and each visitor spent an average of $231 per day. Average spending per party: $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 can’t wait. It’s a job for me. And it’s bringing a lot more jobs down to the Florida area. And I say that more launches would be nice,” 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 boost in the local economy supports jobs, supports our island businesses,” April Romero, Visit South Padre Island director of communications, said during an interview in her office.
“We’ve seen a lot more of our partners install private Tesla chargers, just because we’re seeing an influx of more Teslas on the island. So it’s little things like that we can tell that SpaceX is making an impact, not just on the local economy but on infrastructure being changed,” 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 a lot more SpaceX employees coming and visiting and staying on South Padre Island that hadn’t even heard of this destination before. So SpaceX has put us on a global spotlight,” Romero said.
Starship spectator stays in Texas, launches space company
In a 2021 personal move, space fan Paul Mamakos sold his Virginia home and decided “maybe it’s time to make a change, rather than just 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 were to collect this water and launch it into orbit, and provide it as a resource around Mars — that’s what we’re trying 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 just a lot of launches. I think that’s going to be huge excitement for the Space Coast. And I think we’ll see another kind of economic boom like we saw a few years ago that drove up housing prices and everything else,” Autry said
“I know that won’t make everybody happy,” he said, laughing. “But I think it’s, overall, going to be an amazing thing for Central Florida.”
Among that next generation of rockets, Autry said Starship is “taking it to a whole nother level” of payload volume, potential economic development, and excitement from the 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 support the space industry. I just really feel like there should be some balance between the quality of life and supporting this industry that’s so important to our community,” Delaney said during the commission’s Sept. 23 final budget hearing.
Delaney said she hopes to find “a happy medium” between Starship operations and her District 1 concerned constituents.
During that discussion, Brevard County Commissioner Thad Altman said he fully supports SpaceX: “The more rockets launched and the bigger, the better.”
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’re going to survive as a Space Coast, I think we need to support this effort to launch large rockets,” Altman said.
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Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at Rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1