Building the Spaceport of All Spaceports

[The Story]

On August 25, 2026, SpaceX and Louisiana leadership announced Starbase, Louisiana, a promised $100 billion Starship campus located on a 125,000-acre tract of former Exxon coastal marsh in Vermilion Parish near the community of Pecan Island, with construction targeted for 2027 and a first launch as soon as 2029. SpaceX previously built a Starbase in Texas, the current home of Starship, and that success story gets to generally claim the title of first commercial orbital launch site ever built from scratch in the United States. The process used in Texas is a likely template for what construction will look like in Louisiana.

The company started buying Boca Chica land in 2012, announced a South Texas launch site in 2014, spent years on soil work, and then a late-2010s build-out eventually led to a fully stacked Starship finally flying on April 20, 2023. At Boca Chica, observers watched a beach village become a factory, a test stand, and a catch tower. Everything culminated on May 3, 2025 when it became a city after incorporation was approved by locals (mostly company people at that point) in a vote count of 212 to 6. Formal cityhood followed on May 20^th, making Starbase, Texas a one-road town measuring only about a square mile and a half with a few hundred residents and a SpaceX vice-president as mayor.

Starbase, Texas proved Starship could be welded, stacked, flown, and caught on a private coast, but the location did not give SpaceX room for the cadence they kept describing and all its support needs, i.e., thousands of flights a year, ten pads, a self-contained port with its own methane, power, deep-water slip, housing, and an airport. This is where Pecan Island and Vermilion Parish in Cajun country come in with ideal answers on paper.
SpaceX’s “Louisiana purchase” is optimally located midway between Boca Chica and the Cape, sitting on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway – a man-made, protected barge highway that runs just inside the coastline from Texas, all the way across Louisiana and towards Florida. The Intracoastal further connects to the Freshwater Bayou Canal, giving the company direct access to the Gulf when needed. In addition, a natural-gas infrastructure (Henry Hub) is nearby for rocket fuel (methane) production.

After adding in the beneficial orbital trajectory location of Pecan Island, SpaceX looks to have found a spot that could offer their construction and launch needs. However, the location is also a living coast full of needs of its own thanks to heavy erosion and decades of investment negligence. Those challenges, along with hurricanes and a local population a bit nervous about the coming changes, will certainly become a factor in SpaceX’s progress to reach their goals in the very near future.

This page and its linked content will follow this story as SpaceX builds the spaceport of all spaceports.

[Timeline of Events]

May 7, 2026

State Sen. Bob Hensgens confirms a space company is in talks with ExxonMobil and Vermilion Corporation over roughly 130,000 acres west of Freshwater City / southeast of Pecan Island. SpaceX is rumored to be the company.

August 3, 2026

The Times-Picayune / Advocate reports the state is close to handing SpaceX an 18-mile coastal strip. SpaceX, answering earlier rumors, had already said Starship’s cadence will need more than one coast.

August 25, 2026

SpaceX announces Starbase, LA in a post on X, followed by an official event hosted by the Louisiana governor in the town of Abbeville.

September 11, 2026

First SpaceX job listing tied to Vermilion Parish.

2027 – Target

Construction of the first launch facilities.

2029 – Target

First Starship from Louisiana.

[Chapters]