At the planet's largest spaceport.

SpaceX announced a $100 billion investment to build a facility in Louisiana that is set to become the company's largest spaceport and one of the biggest launch complexes ever planned. Dubbed Starbase Louisiana, the project will be located on a coastal site spanning approximately 500,000 square kilometers. Once fully constructed, the site is expected to feature five launch complexes—each with two pads, totaling ten pads—primarily dedicated to Starship operations; however, the project extends far beyond the structures used to launch the rockets.

Starbase Louisiana will include spacecraft processing facilities, propellant storage areas, on-site fuel production, power generation, a deep-water port, and even a dedicated airport; a natural gas processing facility will also produce the liquid methane used as fuel for Starship locally.

The idea is to concentrate a large part of the chain required to prepare, supply, launch, and recover the vehicles within the same complex. Construction is scheduled to begin by late 2027; if the timeline holds, the first launch could take place as early as 2029. In its initial configuration, the new infrastructure is expected to significantly increase SpaceX's launch capacity.

New Atlas states that, combined with existing facilities, the expansion could enable over 1,000 missions per year, though the long-term goal is even more ambitious. Musk has stated that the Starbase site in Louisiana will eventually need to feature more than a dozen launch towers and support over 30 Starship flights daily—a rate that would amount to more than 10,000 launches per year. This level of capacity remains a future goal and far exceeds any launch frequency currently achieved by the space industry.

To reach such figures, SpaceX relies heavily on the rapid reusability of its rockets; the Falcon 9 has already demonstrated the viability of this strategy in commercial operations, with some first-stage boosters completing dozens of flights. Starship aims to apply this same concept to a much larger vehicle, designed so that both the Super Heavy booster and the spacecraft itself are reusable.

Payload capacity is also critical to the project; Starship is being developed to carry approximately 100 tons or more into orbit, depending on the configuration and mission. Through frequent launches, SpaceX intends to leverage this capacity to place large amounts of cargo into space, expand satellite constellations, and sustain future operations beyond Earth's orbit.

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