Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to invest $100 billion in a new spaceport in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, as the company builds out launch infrastructure for Starship, its fully reusable next-generation rocket. The facility, dubbed Starbase Louisiana, will occupy coastal land acquired from Exxon. Construction is expected to begin in 2027, with initial flight operations targeted for 2029. Before rockets can fly from the site, SpaceX will need launch licenses from the Federal Aviation Administration, a process that includes environmental review and took years at the company's existing Texas spaceport.

Once completed, the site will include five launch complexes with 10 launch pads, propellant production and storage, power generation, vehicle processing, and employee housing, according to SpaceX's official project page.

"Today is a pivotal moment for Louisiana. This announcement pushes our state beyond $250 billion in new investment and puts us at the center of the next great frontier," Governor Jeff Landry said in a statement. "We have the people and talent to build what the world once thought impossible, creating jobs on land, across the Gulf and through space. Our job creation knows no bounds."

The project would become SpaceX's fourth and largest spaceport, joining existing launch sites in South Texas, Florida, and California. Louisiana's economic development office announced the $100 billion campus as the start of a new era of commercial spaceflight for the state. SpaceX already conducts more orbital launches than any other provider—its Falcon rockets accounted for the majority of the world's orbital launch attempts in 2024—but Starship itself remains in the test-flight phase, flying from the company's original Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas. As at that site, the Vermilion Parish location's Gulf Coast position allows launch trajectories over open water.

Starbase Louisiana is part of Musk's plan to support thousands of annual launches for Starlink satellite deployments—the company's satellite internet constellation—as well as missions to Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars. Starlink already serves millions of customers in more than 100 countries, and its satellites make up the majority of active spacecraft in orbit. NASA, for its part, has contracted a version of Starship to serve as the crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program. SpaceX estimates the project will create 3,000 direct jobs over 10 years, with an average annual salary of $92,600.

The company is also pursuing plans to place computing infrastructure in orbit. In February, the Federal Communications Commission opened a public review of a SpaceX proposal to deploy as many as one million satellites for orbital data centers—a count that would far exceed the number of active satellites currently in orbit worldwide across all operators.

"We're preparing to build a spaceport that, until now, has only existed in science fiction," Musk said in a statement. "SpaceX was founded to bring about a future where humans are out exploring amongst the stars, which will only be possible when we make going to space as routine as flying on an airplane. Starbase, Louisiana will unlock that future."