The road to SpaceX's future spaceport ends among dunes and beach grass at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. Boca Chica Beach, near Brownsville, Texas, is the improbable location where SpaceX CEO and billionaire Elon Musk aims to make history. The company now launches its rockets from existing sites like NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Boca Chica Beach would be different: SpaceX wants to transform this empty, wind-swept patch of South Texas into the world's first commercially built, owned, and operated spaceport that can launch to orbit—and beyond.

The company says that within 18 to 24 months of breaking ground, rockets could rise here carrying satellites off the planet. And if Musk has his way, this is the location from which human beings will travel to Mars. He says he'll be one of the first travelers.

The view from the beach doesn't help make the dream seem more real. SpaceX says it could be launching rockets here by the end of 2016. But as of early February, when I visited, there were no visible signs of construction.