When we last covered it a few weeks ago, the plan was still somewhere between a rumor and an open secret. Now it’s official, and it’s enormous.
SpaceX will invest up to $100 billion in “Starbase, Louisiana,” 125,000 coastal acres suitable for supporting high-frequency launches of orbital AI data centers, thanks to abundant natural gas reserves and open waters to the south; the latter allows for near-polar launch trajectories into the perpetually sunlit orbits that underpin the economic case for orbital compute.
The renders accompanying SpaceX’s announcement show ten launchpads for its massive Starship rockets, compared to the two it will soon have in Texas and the three under construction in Florida. It should have plenty of room to spare at the new site: The acreage it will control in Louisiana is more than three hundred times that of its Starbase, Texas facilities.
Official promises from company president Gwynne Shotwell reflect the opposition they are expecting from locals. Saying it expects to create between 3,000 and 10,000 jobs, the company is pledging to preserve most of the wetland acreage for wildlife and recreation, and says its first project will be combating the coastal erosion that has been swallowing 1-3 meters in the area each year.
Construction of launch facilities is to start next year, with launch operations starting in 2029.
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