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Spaceships, Flying Cars, and Underground Tunnels?
- Updated: October 7, 2021
Futuristic Technological Advancements Happening in the RGV
Emilio Flores
La Feria News
Sci-Fi movies like Back to the Future are what it seems we’re living in now. Sci-Fi Technology seems to have emerged into our reality, with Flying cars, underground high-speed tunnels, and spaceships just around the corner! What will the Rio Grande Valley be like in five, ten years?
Back in May, Starship serial number 15 (SN15) successfully completed SpaceX’s fifth high-altitude flight test of a Starship prototype from Starbase in Texas. The Starship spacecraft is a “super-heavy-lift launch vehicle” under development by SpaceX being tested since 2019 and had its first successful flight in August of 2020. It’s both for crew transportation and cargo carrying. Starship is a two stage rocket, and completely reusable for launch.
There has also been talk of creating an underground tunnel for SpaceX employees living on the Island or in Laguna Madre area, allowing easier commute to and from work. This tunnel would also allow the public access to parts of the Boca Chica beach that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access. This idea was suggested by The Boring Company, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, though this proposal may not gain much traction.
“(Paying for it) is not something that the county would be interested in,” Sepulveda told The Herald. “That would be prohibitive for us. We really didn’t get into those details, but once we do we wouldn’t be able to participate with any type of funding.” Furthermore, they said, “Keep in mind that the ship channel goes by there, so that depth would have to be pretty far down.”
This wouldn’t be The Boring Company’s first underground tunnel. Currently their only underground tunnel is in Las Vegas, stretching to be 2 miles long and costing roughly $50 million to build. Though in comparison, the proposal of this tunnel would only be a third of a mile, Sepulveda told The Herald,
“I think we’re willing to work with SpaceX just to look at what options, solutions, are out there. I’m not sure what amount, if any, we can bring to the table financially.”
And now more recently a company called Paragon VTOL has placed its headquarter in Brownsville. Paragon VTOL’s vision is to have flying drones that have the capacity to taxi people. In a conference held in Brownsville Tx., Dwight Smith, founder of Paragon VTOL LLC, Explains why He chose Brownsville, “…It all comes down to leadership. When I made the decision to come down to Brownsville, it was because of the leadership.”
