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Oracle is one of several big California companies to relocate its headquarter to Austin recently. (CC)
The effects of the California migration have now bled into politics.
On Monday, the U.S Census Bureau announced a shift in political power as Texas gained two congressional seats—the most out of any state—while California lost one seat for the first time in its 170-year history.
The announcement came after extensive population growth in the Lone Star State, especially among the Hispanic population, which has grown by more than 2 million people between 2010 and 2020. Locally, it seems like every other person is from California with Texas being the number one state for Californians to move to.
With Austin and other Texas metros offering more "bang for your buck" housing as well as the Techsodus, which has seen several tech companies from California and elsewhere bring their headquarters to Texas, Californians are coming into the state in rapid succession.
Over 80,000 Californians moved to Texas in both 2018 and 2019, according to the Census Bureau, with a net migration of around 45,000 each year. That number appears to have only increased in recent years, aided by each state's response to the COVID pandemic and the public migration of influential figures such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk and podcaster Joe Rogan.
By contrast, California's growth is at a standstill for the first time in nearly two centuries.
While the state has seen changes such as new tech jobs and, already, the reshaping of some Texas cities, this marks the first time that the California migration can be seen in Texas' national politics.
With two new congressional seats, the state will have 38 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives for the next decade.
The migration has already started to shuffle the U.S' political geography. Young people, who tend to vote Democratic, have flocked to Texas' urban centers. According to an Associated Press analysis of American Community Survey data, the 20-34-year-old population grew by 22% in Austin, 24% in San Antonio and 19% in Houston since 2010.
Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis perform at Beto Rally at the Pan American Neighborhood Park in Austin.
Texas, a once-conservative stronghold, was threatened by the power of young, liberal voters, many of them migrants from other states, when Beto O'Rourke almost beat an incumbent Republican senator for the first time in 40 years.
With two more seats in the House of Representatives, the U.S' second-biggest state going blue would have a bigger impact than ever before.
But if the people migrating to Texas bring the politics of the state they're moving from, will Texas stay an affordable, job-laden haven?
This fall, the census will release more extensive data, which will be used by state lawmakers to start the difficult, often-contested process of redrawing legislative and congressional districts.
Until then, Texas' housing market will continue to climb, Tesla's Gigafactory will come closer to completion in the Texas capital and, if the trend continues, 85,000 Californians will begin filing in to the ever-growing Lone Star State.
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Bruce McCandless II's untethered spacewalk made history in 1984. The red stripes above his knees were the only way that NASA could determine which astronaut was Bruce and which was his fellow spacewalker, Bob Stewart. (NASA)
'Wonders All Around' is a new book by Austinite Bruce McCandless III about his dad, the astronaut Bruce McCandless II. (Bruce McCandless III)
I met McCandless III, who lives in Austin with his wife Pati, for a coffee a few months ago, thanks to the introduction from a mutual friend. As we talked about losing our dads, being writers and parents and living in Austin while still dealing with COVID, his dad's famous flight didn't come up, but the process of writing such an epic biography of a complex, only recently passed man was something worth unpacking over coffee.
I hadn't read the book yet, but over the next few weeks, I got to know the McCandless family in such a sweet way that I wanted to write a little about the book here to perhaps inspire you to seek out a copy of "Wonders All Around."
As much as this is a book about space, it's also a book about grief. And persistence. And stoicism. And masculinity and maternality.
The elder McCandless died in 2017, just a few years after losing his wife, Bernice, to cancer.
This passing of the torch from father to son left the younger McCandless inspired to take on this decades-long narrative. McCandless III sets the tone for the book with a memory of the family sitting around the dinner table at their home outside Johnson Space Center near Houston in the mid 1970s, when his dad, who joined NASA in 1966 at the age of 28, wasn't sure he'd ever actually make it to space.
"Our dinners were somber affairs. We ate around a rectangular Formica table in the breakfast nook. Tracy and I sat on benches padded with orange vinyl cushions. Mom and Dad occupied faux-Spanish style chairs with green felt upholstery. Despite the informal, Howard Johnson's-at-the-airport feel of the furnishings, there was a tension in the air that set in right around the time the frozen string beans started steaming. I had the feeling that my sister and I had forgotten to do something important, though I couldn't figure out what it was, or that judgment had been rendered on us and we'd been found guilty of … something — again, it was unclear what. Horseplay was prohibited. The TV and all sources of music or other frivolity were turned off, and singing was strictly forbidden. The only sound came from the aquarium pump. My father had a 100-gallon tank along the wall behind his chair. Sometimes the big plecostomus would attach itself by its mouth to the glass facing us, and I imagined it sucking all the oxygen out of the room."
Imagining what it must have been like to require oxygen to survive, not in outer space but in the living room with your family, sets up the story of the McCandless ancestors, including a guy who was killed by Wild Bill Hickok and the author's grandfather, who was an admiral in the U.S. Navy.
No pressure, Bruce.
It was fascinating to read about the 18 years that Bruce McCandless II worked for NASA before he finally had his first flight, which debuted the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a jet-fueled backpack that he and Ed Whitsett Jr. spent so many years developing. (That's the joystick-controlled machine he's wearing in that mind-bending poster that hung on millions of Americans' walls over the following decade.)
The author McCandless has the unenviable task of trying to put into words what that flight must have felt like. His dad flew 150 feet away from the shuttle Challenger, which would, of course, break into a million little pieces just a few years later.
When President Reagan called the shuttle to congratulate the astronauts that day in 1984, the command center set up a demonstration space walk to give the president a live view of McCandless through the shuttle window.
Bruce McCandless II, trains with Kathy Sullivan, right, in preparation to launch the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA)
The only problem was, there wasn't much fuel left. McCandless went out anyway, trying to stay within 10-15 feet of the spacecraft. He got into position and turned off the unit to preserve propellant. After the president said a few words and the video switched off, McCandless turned on the unit and "looked for the closest piece of the orbiter, pointed at it, put the hand controller in +X (and) got a sort of sighing noise as it accelerated in that direction." He ran out of fuel just as he grabbed onto a rail on the orbiter. Hand over hand, he brought himself back to the donning station.
It's that kind of suspense that made this book so thrilling to read.
There's space tension like when McCandless is operating as CAPCOM, the only person talking to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin while they are walking on the surface of the moon, and his commander wants him to break protocol and call them back early, even though there are no signs of distress.
The book is also so touching. I cried while reading about the declining health of Bernice, who survived so many astronaut wife struggles over the years and at the end of her life remained a loving partner and mother.
Bruce McCandless was a Navy pilot who was picked to join NASA in 1966. His first space flight wasn't until 1984. (NASA)
It's easy to forget that McCandless II had an entirely other memorable historic moment—launching the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990—and this one seems to have struck an even deeper chord with McCandless III.
The Hubble launch was McCandless' second and final flight. He was 52 and had worked at NASA for 24 years.
McCandless II spends the last chapters of the book making a compelling case that his dad's work to fix and update the Hubble are among the greatest achievements to science. He continued to work on Hubble for another two decades after retiring from NASA through his work at Lockheed Martin.
Bruce McCandless, left, and the flight crew that launched the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. He was 52 years old. (NASA)
He was the "nuts, bolts, screws, and wires guy," the auto mechanic rather than the scientist, who kept the telescope going 340 miles above Earth for more than twice its life expectancy. The Hubble has been cited in more than 18,000 scientific papers and has revealed countless secrets and unsolved mysteries from around the universe and beyond.
"The size, shape, and sheer spectral weirdness of the images boggle the imagination and make prophets and dreamers of us all," McCandless writes toward the end of "Wonders All Around. "Some of us pay therapists to tell us we're important and unique. Then we check in with Hubble so the satellite can inform us just how galactically marginal we all are. The truth is somewhere in the middle."
What a beautiful reminder.
