Trump's Border Wall Could Split SpaceX's Texas Launchpad In Two (latimes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Los Angeles Times A launchpad on the U.S.-Mexico border, which it plans to use for rockets carrying humans around the world and eventually to Mars, could be split in two by the Trump administration's planned wall... Lawmakers said they were concerned about the effect on the company's 50-acre facility after seeing a Department of Homeland Security map showing a barrier running through what they described as a launchpad...

James Gleeson, a SpaceX spokesman, declined to provide details on how the fence would affect the facility. "The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently requested SpaceX permit access to our South Texas Launch site to conduct a site survey," he said in a statement. "At this time, SpaceX is evaluating the request and is in communication with DHS to further understand their plans...." Musk is working on a new, more powerful vehicle known as Starship to eventually ferry humans to Mars. SpaceX recently announced that it would test the Starship test vehicle at the site in south Texas.

Comments

Obvious First Post

[mykepredko]

You have to do this to protect against illegal aliens.

Re:OK, but why...

[Strider-]

It's a few miles away from the border. The dirty secret behind this stupid wall is that it's often several miles inland from the actual border due to practical construction considerations.

Re:Floodplains & new borders?

[swillden]

If I was to build a fence inside my property, after a number of years the land would become legally my neighbours

Not true, presence of a wall somewhere on your property doesn't move the property line. Nor does the lack of a fence/wall prevent an adverse possession.

That depends on many factors. It depends on how well-defined the legal boundary is, on how long the adverse possession continues, on what use the other party makes of the bit of your property, and more.

I doubt you could find any competent attorney who wouldn't counsel you to immediately raise a complaint about the location of the fence. You might not have to insist on it being moved, but you almost certainly want to make it abundantly clear to your neighbor that you know where the actual boundary is, and make sure they and the relevant land registrar do, too.

I almost had to go to court over a misplaced fence once, but avoided the battle by quickly moving the fence to the correct location when the land changed hands. In my case the issue was further complicated by the fact that the adverse possession was incorporated into a right-of-way... but when the farmer who owned the field behind my house sold to a real-estate developer the right-of-way was removed anyway; it became part of the backyards of a row of homes and a new right-of-way, on a paved suburban street, was added. My attorney counseled me to quickly move the fence after the property changed hands and before construction started. The developer still might have tried to dispute the change, but it put them in the position of trying to move an established boundary marker that also matched the legal boundary -- an easy argument for me and hard for them. In any event the developer never contacted me and my new neighbor never knew there had been any dispute. Possibly the farmer never told the developer about it.

If I'd waited until a house was built and sold and then tried to assert my ownership of part of my neighbor's backyard, my lawyer says I may well have lost, even though the legal description of the actual boundary was clear. The nature of the use of the adverse possession (right-of-way, at first, residential property, later) and the way you go about trying to fix it matter. Grabbing it back while it wasn't used at all was the ideal solution.

In the case of a wall between the US and Mexico, that boundary has its own problems, but the wall clearly wouldn't change anything. In the area where the border is defined by the course of the Rio Grande, there have been many disputes over land that switched sides when the river moved. In 1970 a treaty was signed that settled all the previous disputes and established clear rules for addressing new changes in the river course. This is well settled, and the presence of a wall on US soil wouldn't change anything.

Re:There seem to be some disputed facts here?

[quantaman]

So the USA today map and overflight show that the proposed border wall starts at least a dozen miles from the plotted site of the SpaceX facility.

Someone's astonishingly wrong or lying deliberately.

Yes, the currently proposed and constructed wall starts a dozen miles west of the SpaceX facility.

Now DHS and CBP is proposing even more wall and fencing (after all, the usual narrative includes walling the entire border). And one of the proposed sections would go further east, through the SpaceX facility.