SpaceX commits $100B to a second Starbase in Louisiana — first launch 2029

SpaceX announced on 25 August 2026, alongside Louisiana governor Jeff Landry, that it will build Starbase Louisiana on a 125,000-acre site at Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish. The company puts the investment at $100B and the buildout at ten Starship launch pads plus supporting infrastructure, with construction starting in 2027 and a first Starship launch targeted for 2029; long term it describes capacity for thousands of flights a year. SpaceX expects more than 3,000 jobs, with Elon Musk suggesting the figure could eventually reach 10,000. President Gwynne Shotwell said the company would help fund environmental work, including "thousands of acres of marsh creation" using dredged material and offshore sediment. Louisiana built Saturn V stages but has never hosted an orbital launch.

Why it matters

The binding constraint on Starship has never been how many rockets SpaceX can build — it is how often it can legally light one. Starbase Texas sits inside an environmental review that caps annual flights, and every cadence promise runs into that ceiling. Buying a second site an order of magnitude larger, on the Gulf but away from Boca Chica, is a bet that the permitting problem is solved by geography and years of lead time rather than by argument.

The number to hold lightly is $100B. It is a stated intention over an unstated horizon, announced jointly with a state that is competing for the project, and it is roughly the same figure now attached to several AI and space buildouts announced this year — a genre of number that describes ambition more than a budget. What is checkable is the sequence: 2027 construction, 2029 first launch. Both are far enough out that the interesting test arrives sooner, in whether the federal environmental review for a 125,000-acre Gulf coastal site moves at the pace the schedule assumes. Marsh creation funded by the applicant is the tell that SpaceX knows this is the hard part.

What to watch

The federal environmental review's scope and timeline, whether Starbase Texas's flight cap is raised or stays the reason this exists, and whether ground is actually broken in 2027.