Houston's own Statue of Liberty

Houston's own Statue of Liberty? Giant Astronaut to tower taller than Sam Houston — and include an elevator

Never one to pass up a chance to build a towering statue along the highway, legendary Houston artist David Adickes has signed on to design the largest project of his career — an 80-foot concrete astronaut at I-45 and NASA Parkway that would tower over the famous Sam Houston statue in size.

The impressive statue will stand above a newly-proposed education center dedicated to the Apollo space program and its historic moon landings. The City of Webster, which owns the land for the project, will partner with the Apollo and Beyond nonprofit to raise funds for this new space center.

The statue and Apollo center, neither of which have any direct affiliation with NASA, are expected to lure as many as 800,000 visitors a year to a community still hurting from the federal agency's cancellation of the space shuttle program in 2011.

"This would be an icon, for not only Webster but NASA and this whole south part of Texas."

"This would be an icon, for not only Webster but NASA and this whole south part of Texas," Adickes tells KTRK Channel 13 about his monumental art project. "The excitement comes when I actually start trying to figure out how to do it and where it's going to be done. All the details, that's the fun part."

The artist envisions a 1960s-era astronaut triumphantly planting an American flag onto a 50-foot pedestal that will feature a small museum.

Like the Statue of Liberty or the San Jacinto monument — and unlike Adickes' 67-foot Sam Houston statue in Huntsville — the astronaut would include an elevator to lift visitors atop its massive helmet for sweeping views of Houston and Galveston. The towering Apollo homage has an anticipated cost of $5 million, with an additional $25 million required for the education center.

Organizers say the 20,000-square-foot complex, currently dubbed the Apollo and Beyond Center, also will serve as a sort of business and technology incubator for a region with deep ties to the aerospace industry. Multi-purpose meeting areas will host conferences and talks aimed at bringing together area tech talent with international firms.

Houston artist David Adickes has signed on to create an 80-foot cement astronaut commemorating the Apollo missions.

Apollo Center and Beyond rendering February 2014

Rendering courtesy of City of Webster

Houston artist David Adickes has signed on to create an 80-foot cement astronaut commemorating the Apollo missions.

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Jobs report

Texas clocks in as No. 7 best state to find a job, new report says

Photo by The Jopwell Collection on Unsplash

It's easier to find a job in Texas than in nearly any other state.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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