Went to Starbase as a part of my Texas eclipse trip. Pretty neat. Since it’s a public highway and beach, you can get quite close to the rocket (as long as they aren’t doing a launch or test):
It’s easy to visit: start in Brownsville and go down Hwy 4. Plenty of places to park along the highway since it has various historical markers as well. And it’s legal to drive on the beach.
Obviously, don’t do anything dumb like crossing private property lines or messing with the guards. But it’s all pretty chill. The closest point you can get to the launch mount is on this flat, crusty area to the southwest with some property line markers. Nice unobstructed view, too.
Ars Technica had an article recently about their latest plans, which include building multiple Starships (upper stage) a day. Would seem ridiculous if they weren’t in the middle of building a giant factory site. It’s hard to get a sense of the size in this shot (it’s highly foreshortened), but check out how the beams fade away in the distance:
It’s something like 800 feet long.
Anyway, it’s all coming along nicely. Boca Chica isn’t such a bad site after all. It’s actually closer to Brownsville than I’d thought, and Brownsville is also larger than I’d thought. I suspect it’s also helpful being an oil-focused port city, with local expertise in heavy construction. So getting large structures built in Boca Chica is not such a hard problem.