State Sen. Ted Cruz made his first visit to the Boca Chica SpaceX facility on Wednesday.

“I'm really proud of their operations here in Texas," Cruz said. 

Cruz sits on the senate commerce committee, and said he's had a hand in every major piece of space legislation for the last decade.

The feedback he's getting from commercial space operators are frustrations about federal regulations, Cruz said.

“They want to hire more workers, they want to grow, they want to be launching and driving America into space,” Cruz said. “It's slowed down sadly over the last two and a half years."

The FAA has exercised approval authority over every flight so far, and is still investigating what happened with the April launch that ended in a midair explosion.

Cruz says future space travel through NASA, supported by private space companies, is looking promising.

“We're going to land the first woman on the surface of the moon. As the dad of two daughters, that's really exciting, and the moon is just a stopping point,” Cruz said. “We're going to build a base on the moon, and then the next step is to go to Mars. And I authored the legislation and wrote the federal law that the objective of NASA and space exploration should be to take us to Mars.”

Cruz says the race to the moon and to Mars is a race against China.

“I'm confident the very first boot that lands on the surface of the red planet will be an American astronaut, an American boot, continuing to lead,” Cruz said. “And the beauty of it is, it may well be driven right here from South Texas."

The SpaceX Boca Chica facility is surrounded by protected property and several endangered species, as well as archaeological resources.

Cruz said he wants to preserve those resources, but he doesn't want those regulations to get in the way of more space development.