The Highway to Mars

Payload

Factuality

Ownership

The Highway to Mars

Five years ago, Adalberto Roca drove down the barren stretch of Texas highway from downtown Brownsville to Boca Chica Beach to start his first day of work at SpaceX building Starship rockets bound for orbit—and, one day, Mars. Once a shrimp boat builder launching vessels into the Gulf, he is now assembling ships for a very different frontier. “I’ve always been in construction, but never thought I’d be building rockets,” Adalberto, 54, told me th…