SpaceX says it is constructing its largest spaceport but, committing $100 billion for a Louisiana website

“Potentially the world’s largest spaceport”

Louisiana Economic Development describes the project as potentially the world’s largest spaceport, with the capacity to support thousands of launches a year. 

That claim is about launch capacity, not land. By physical footprint, the current record holder is Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, sprawling across roughly 6,717 square kilometers—more than 13 times the size of SpaceX’s planned Louisiana site. What Musk and Louisiana officials mean by “biggest launch site on Earth” is cadence: Starbase Louisiana is designed for more than a dozen launch towers and over 30 Starship flights a day, a pace no existing spaceport, including Baikonur, comes close to matching.

Louisiana Economic Development estimates SpaceX will create more than 3,000 direct jobs over the next decade, with an average annual salary of $92,600, as well as roughly 8,100 indirect jobs—leading to more than 11,100 new job opportunities in Acadiana.

“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,” Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry said in the news release. “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 Louisiana site is intended to become a major part of SpaceX’s push to make Starship a high-frequency launch system. The company says the Gulf Coast location provides access to a wide range of launch trajectories, while the availability of natural gas can support the facility’s fuel and power requirements. SpaceX also envisions the site supporting missions beyond conventional satellite launches, including lunar and Mars missions and the deployment of satellites for its emerging orbital data center business.

The project is also projected to be a major economic-development bet for the state. Louisiana offered SpaceX an incentive package tied to the capital investment, job creation and other commitments. Under a local payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement, SpaceX will make a $20 million upfront payment and at least $25 million annually for 25 years, with the state estimating more than $820 million in direct local payments under the agreement. The company will also make a $25 million charitable contribution to the Community Foundation of Acadiana.

The property was formerly owned by Exxon Mobil, and the state says the development will bring the site back into commercial use while creating new economic activity along the coast. SpaceX is also expected to work with Louisiana agencies on wetlands, wildlife, coastal and environmental reviews and restoration.

Musk’s growing space-travel portfolio

Starbase Louisiana joins a rapidly expanding network of facilities designed to increase Musk’s ability to manufacture, launch and eventually refurbish space travel for humanity in future years. SpaceX’s existing Starbase in South Texas remains the center of Starship development and launch operations. The company has been expanding manufacturing capacity there with a facility known as Gigabay, designed to add 24 work cells for Starship construction, integration and refurbishment. Texas officials have awarded SpaceX a grant of up to $7.5 million for the project, while state regulatory filings put the Gigabay facility at roughly 700,000 square feet and an estimated $250 million in construction costs.

But there are other big fish to fry for the tech giant in Texas. SpaceX announced earlier in August it is building a manufacturing operation for vertically integrated semiconductors—dubbed “Terafab”—which will become the world’s largest building once constructed. The joint Tesla-SpaceX project is planned to be located in Grimes County, where it announced an initial investment of more than $16.8 billion. The factory will exceed 100 million square feet—making it five times larger than the current largest building on the planet—and manufacture, package and test advanced logic and memory chips for applications which include Tesla vehicles, robots and space-based data centers. It also filed eight tax applications to freeze school maintenance and operations property taxes for roughly 48% of the appraised value per phase of the project.