People Urge Woman To File A Class Action Lawsuit After Elon Musk's Constant SpaceX Rocket Tests Destroy Her House
It's just the latest in the years-long saga of SpaceX's destruction of Texas communities.
Andrew Harnik | Shutterstock As even many of his former supporters are now noticing, Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and unelected government official unconstitutionally overseeing our country's financial affairs, doesn't seem particularly interested in the well-being or enrichment of anyone besides himself.
This isn't surprising to anyone who's been paying attention, however, especially when it comes to Musk's expansion of his rocket and spacecraft design company SpaceX into Texas, which has resulted in years of outcry from local citizens that has mostly gone ignored. One such citizen recently shared a bracing glimpse into how SpaceX is affecting locals' lives, and it has people urging her to call a lawyer.
A woman showed how SpaceX's constant rocket tests are destroying her Texas home.
In a series of videos, TikToker @theferalguru has shared glimpses of what it's like to live near SpaceX's rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas, near Waco. She lives 12 miles away, a distance that seems far enough that she and her neighbors mostly wouldn't notice SpaceX's activities. Think again.
In the video, the woman's entire house can be heard rattling as if she were experiencing a low-level earthquake. One test she documented subjected her home to a full six minutes of vibration and shaking.
The woman's home is now riddled with cracks that indicate foundation damage, which she says SpaceX has insisted isn't happening.
For context, most earthquakes last around 30 seconds or less, so you can imagine the kind of damage six uninterrupted minutes of vibration and shaking can do. Her videos are truly remarkable — not only can you hear her entire house shaking, but in one you can actually hear her walls cracking in the background.
Once the test was over, she also filmed throughout her home, showing walls, ceilings, and "nearly every doorway" riddled with cracks — all of which indicate that the foundation of her house has likely been affected.
As you know, if you own a home, and especially if you own one in earthquake country, foundation repairs cost thousands, even sometimes running into the five-figures. But the woman said SpaceX has insisted that their tests are not intense enough to damage their foundations. Other local residents say different, however.
SpaceX has already faced multiple lawsuits from residents near its Texas facilities.
The woman said that in the seven years she's lived in her home, several of her neighbors have had to have their foundations repaired due to SpaceX's testing, and they are certainly not alone.
Locals have been complaining for years about the same kind of damage, and worse. A Waco man filed a lawsuit against SpaceX in 2024 stating that his home had actually shifted on its foundation due to the intense vibrations.
In nearby Oglesby, a resident has reported similar damage to his and his neighbors' homes. "It’s getting worse all the time," he told the local paper, the Gatesville Messenger. "Unfortunately, we’re losing things on the shelves, and it’s about to shake the windows out." He also stated that SpaceX's water usage has dried up wells in his community.
They're not alone in that environmental impact, either. SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas, near South Padre Island on the Gulf of Mexico (which is what it's called, because there is no such thing as the Gulf of America), has caused outrage among locals for the way they say it is impacting the local waterways and ecosystems.
People urged the woman to rally her neighbors and file an Erin Brockovich-style class-action lawsuit.
"Remember Erin Brockovich? This is your PG&E lawsuit babe," one of several commenters wrote to the woman, referencing the landmark class-action case that made the legal activist famous. That lawsuit ended in the largest direct-action judgment in history at the time after Pacific Gas & Electric was found to have poisoned ground water in communities near its Hinkley, California facility for decades, causing deadly health problems and property damage to local residents.
It's hard not to feel like the SpaceX situation has the makings of a similar effort. From the environmental impacts to widespread damage to homes, the effects of SpaceX's presence seem undeniable. The risk it poses is difficult to square as well. Rocket testing is dangerous business, and SpaceX itself has a notorious record of explosions.
Musk, however, has been coolly apathetic about it. Speaking to press in 2018, he claimed that in Boca Chica, there's "no one around, and so if it blows up, it’s cool." You need only look at a Google Map of the area to see that claim is ludicrous — South Padre Island is just five miles up the coast, for starters.
But in a statement that now seems almost quaint given the events pertaining to Musk in the past few months, one local resident and activist recently said that Musk's high public profile — and billions of dollars in federal government contracts — seem to have made him immune to criticism or accountability.
It's unsurprising, then, that investigations have shown that it is local and state politicians being enriched by his projects, not the local economies that were promised to reap the benefits. Sounds exactly like the kind of corruption and abuse Brockovich, or some enterprising lawyer with a similar moral compass, might be interested in. Time to make some phone calls, Ms. @theferalguru.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.