Monday’s disappointment has evolved into Thursday’s hope for those crowding Boca Chica Beach, near Brownsville, for the chance to see SpaceX’s Starship rocket launch into history.
“The ground kind of rumbles. It's not loud at first. But when it gets up above you, and the thrust is still building in you thinking that it should be kind of dissipating, and it's just getting louder. Then you kind of think, where's the car?” said Maria Pointer.
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WATCH HEREEver since her home was swallowed up by Elon Musk’s project, Maria Pointer has watched the facilities take shape to build and launch Starship, the world’s largest rocket measuring 400 feet tall.
After watching from the kitchen window, Pointer sold her home to SpaceX and moved a few miles away.
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SIGN UP This week, she’s hosting nine people at her fishing lease turned rocket-launch-watching campsite.
“We are right on the exclusion zone, right on the edge of the four-mile required exclusion zone,” she said.
Pointer’s also invested in photographing and recording the launches and even started streaming them on her YouTube and Discord channels, helping tens of thousands, from as far away as Russia, witness the test flight.
“It's very important that they do this launch. It's not just to get it off of the launch mount. It’s to get the data back,” said Pointer.
Hopefully, making future launches safer and putting SpaceX one step closer to its goal of ferrying people to the moon and beyond.
While Pointer said she’s not sure that will happen in her lifetime, she’s excited to see and share SpaceX’s journey with the world.
“We’re going to see rockets fly to orbit. Maybe not the moon and maybe not people here in Boca Chica but they’re going to be built here and they're going be tested here and I get to be in the front row seat,” she said.
