SpaceX to Build $100 Billion Spaceport in Louisiana

SpaceX will build a $100 billion spaceport on the Gulf Coast of south-central Louisiana with the goal of launching more than 30 Starship flights a day, founder and CEO Elon Musk announced on Aug. 25.

The Starbase Louisiana facility, with over a dozen launch towers, would be the largest launch site on Earth, he said.

“I think it’s incredibly exciting for the people of Louisiana,” Musk said in a video released with the announcement.

The company expects to create 3,000 direct new jobs in the next decade, with an average annual salary of $92,600, which is 192 percent above the local average wage. Louisiana Economic Development estimates the project will generate more than 8,100 indirect new jobs for a total of more than 11,100 new job opportunities in the Acadiana region.

SpaceX staff searched for a site that was close to fuel sources and offered a place to build the rockets at a rate required for the rapid launch schedule. It also had to have the right trajectories for missions, SpaceX’s Vice President Sheila McCorkle said.

“Louisiana happens to be a perfect candidate for that,” McCorkle said in the announcement video.

Vermillion Parish is located in the coastal marshes just south of Pecan Island. The site planned for the spaceport was previously utilized for oil and gas operations and other industrial uses.

A decade-old coastal damages lawsuit brought by the state and Vermillion Parish against ExxonMobil Oil Company was resolved to allow the spaceport to be built on the site.

A federal judge signed off on dismissing the lawsuit last week, ending the legal fight and freeing up about 130,000 acres of marshland to allow SpaceX to build the launch site.

SpaceX plans to fortify the shoreline and bring back the marshlands, and take other environmental measures as part of its plans for the site, McCorkle said.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry announced the spaceport plans at a press event in Abbeville, alongside SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell and other officials.

“Today is nothing short of a transformational moment,” Landry told the audience of elected officials and locals.

“For generations, Louisiana has known abundance and hardship,” Landry said. “Yet thought it all, the people of this state labored, they rebuilt and they believed … Not because the road was easy but because Louisiana was worth the struggle.

“Today, what Elon Musk and his team are offering Louisiana is different,” he said. “They are offering us a permanent future and lasting prosperity.”

The company stated that the spaceport is being designed to be self-sustaining from the ground up to have everything necessary to increase launch rates.

The site will include multiple Starship launch pads, deep-water shipping capabilities, vehicle processing facilities, and an airport.

The location also comes with access to abundant natural gas, which SpaceX will use for the site’s power stations and to liquify onsite into the liquid methane that fuels Starship, according to the company.

Work at the site is expected to start in 2029.

Musk said he plans to create a place the public can also visit.

“We’ll make it such that the public can come and see, like they do at Cape Canaveral,” Musk said.

Once built, Starbase Louisiana will become the fourth launch site for SpaceX. The company currently launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida, Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, and Starbase Texas in Boca Chica.