By Scott Shephard

Deb and I have made it from Arizona to South Padre Island via West Texas. We will spend a few days in the relative warmth of the Texas Gulf before heading back to the Great White North. As the pelican flies, our small rental unit is only 5 or 6 miles from the Elon Musk’s Texas based SpaceX “Starport.'“ And so we went to visit.

What is striking about the Starport is that it is right next to a public road that leads to a public beach called Boca Chica. Because of this, you get an up-close-and-personal view of the rockets, their infrastructure and the countless construction projects going on at this fairly vast compound. To get this photo, I didn’t use some gigantic telephoto lens. I’m only about 50 yards away from the rockets and I could have gotten much closer. That’s pretty cool. Like other things that Elon Musk does, it is very good free advertising. Brilliant!

You may know that Musk is also behind the hugely successful electric car known as Tesla. While Deb and I drove by the launch/constructions sites, I spotted 3 Tesla autos doing the same. A pilgrimage by one futuristic technology to another? I can’t say. But I’m thinking that if you owned a Tesla and were near the SpaceX Starport, there would be a strong magnetic pull. I felt it and I’m driving an F150.

Canon R5 1/800 sec f/7 ISO 320