SpaceX confirms its purchase of Pecan Island launch site in Louisiana
Pecan Island SpaceX facility?
Louisiana’s governor Jeff Landry today confirmed that SpaceX has purchased the 130K square acre plot — about 200 square miles — near the unincorporated village of Pecan Island on the southern coast of Louisiana.
In a joint release, SpaceX outlined in detail its plans for the spaceport, including a commitment to invest $100 billion and hire 3,000 people at the site. Construction to begin in 2027 with the first Starship launch in 2029. Musk added this detail in his own tweet:
Starbase Louisiana will ultimately have over a dozen launch towers, enabling more than 30 Starship flights per day and making it the biggest launch site on Earth!
SpaceX also today announced that the Falcon 9 launch today from Cape Canaveral was the last Starlink launch of a Falcon 9 from Florida. The company will continue to launch Starlinks on Falcon 9s from Vandenberg in California, but will shift all such Florida launches to Falcon Heavy and Starship, with Starship likely doing all in a few years.
This is clearly the company’s first step in retiring its Falcon family of rockets to replace them with Starship/Superheavy. Having Pecan Island makes this transition possible.
Posted while we drive north on I-17, just north of Phoenix. I will add more when I am settled in later tonight.
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So the only question in my mind is what will crew supply missions with Dragon use for launches?
Falcon 9. The ISS and the Falcon 9 will likely retire together.
Oh, in their announcement, I see its only Starlink flights out of FL that have ended. Dragon and commercial flights still will use pad 40.
Your first reply was correct with respect to the way Robert stated it. My mind did a pause too but you clarified it. There are still Dragon flights, commercial satellites and government payloads that are scheduled for the Falcon 9. I am guessing that most future Starlink satellites will be the Gen 3 versions until Starbase Louisiana is operational then it will be all Gen 3 or later.
I suspect that being in a hurry to retire the Falcons could be premature at this point. Roughly along the lines of retiring DC3s as soon as better planes came along, which didn’t happen with them flying for decades on. Starship is still in development, and the possibility of delays before becoming fully operational shouldn’t be ignored.
Is it as big a problem when what they’re ramping down is Starlink launches? They can afford to lose Starlink payloads with Starship for a while before they fly third parties aboard.
Starship IS the DC-3 of orbital rockets.
Is expected to become is not IS Starship may become the 707 of space flight at some point or it could become the Comet. Falcon has fully earned It’s place in history.
Note that the video showed 10 mechazillas lined up along the coast. That’s pretty beefy, and will likely be the largest launch facility they build for a long, long time, thanks to the remoteness and plentiful methane resources. What inclinations (other than polar, which seems to be the big advantage of Puh-con Island) can be reasonably reached from there?
Pecan Island/Starbase LA is far enough west of Florida to do equatorial launches. By 2029 the Starship will no longer be experimental and safe to launch across land.
So Starbase, TX times six, according to Elon. It was interesting to note something in the distant background of one of the sequences in the CGI part of the video about this that looks to be a Gigabay x 3 – a Terabay perhaps? And maybe its bookend twin at the other end of the complex? Big doings coming to the Louisiana Gulf Coast.
I think Elon is still smoking the wacky weed. 30 ships a day?
For a mature system. That’ll be some time down the road, but when they have multiple pads in Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, they’d be about halfway there with a ship per tower per day. The real question isn’t technology so much as it is finances; will Starlink and Starmind be enough to finance that much expansion? Will they need their infrastructure deals with AI companies to enable that? Or even more fiscal firepower?
In the brave new AI world–a world with no foreseeable bounds (is a singularity lurking inside the approaching event horizon?)—
Information = Money
Nate P wrote: “For a mature system.”
A dozen towers providing over 30 launches per day tells us that they think each tower can average better than 2½ launches a day. An earlier goal was to launch three times per day per tower, but there could be some downtime for each tower’s maintenance, for rocket maneuvers to maintenance facilities, or for other activities we aren’t thinking of, right now, so maybe this is a reasonable estimate for the reality of operations at these towers. Although, that seems like an unreasonably rapid turnaround pace, so “reasonable” may not seem like the right word to use.
At least 30 daily launches gives an average of at least 10,950 annual launches — just from Louisiana. The other five or so towers in Texas and Florida suggest the possibility of another 5,000-ish annual launches. At this moment, it seems impossible to have that many payloads to launch, but right now there is also a shortage of launches for the businesses that already want to put things into orbit. The announcement that SpaceX would stop taking customers for their Rideshare program seems to have spooked several companies. There is a possibility that by reducing the number of Starlink launches from the busy Eastern Range that SpaceX is freeing up some launches for customers. Either way, SpaceX may not have the same high number of launches at the end of the year that they have had in the past couple of years.
I like their idea of having their own airport at Starbase Louisiana (Starbase, LA — which sounds to me more like it is in Los Angeles, but that probably comes from living in the brown state of California).
Not launching Starlinks from the Eastern Range means that the version 2 satellites are ramping down, with only the polar portion of the system being launched until Starship ramps up launching the version 3 Starlinks. Monthly launches to the end of the year limits the number of version 3s going to orbit, for a while.
“The real question isn’t technology so much as it is finances; will Starlink and Starmind be enough to finance that much expansion? Will they need their infrastructure deals with AI companies to enable that? Or even more fiscal firepower?”
As Concerned noted, information is money, or at least it greatly assists in its acquisition. My understanding is that information is why the Rothschilds became the Rothschilds. They found a faster way of transmitting information (carrier pigeons rather than semaphore), which gave them information faster than anyone else, so they were able to make business decisions and deals that benefitted from that early knowledge of faraway events. The internet can be similar for those who are better at searches than others are. AI may be able to give even better answers, again for those who are better at asking the right questions.
Starlink is making a lot of money. In fact, SpaceX has been making more money from the satellites of each Falcon launch than the money they make from each Falcon launch for customers. One could wonder why they bother launching customer satellites, but I think that Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX’s real name, if you don’t remember) is more interested in expanding into space than in gaining riches; the riches come because expanding into space is such a good idea that everyone (companies, countries) are eager to get into the action.
My point is: Yes, Starlink and Starmind are likely to be able to finance a lot of expansion, once the IPO windfall has been spent. Which reminds me, where did I read that SpaceX plans to spend $100 billion on developing the Louisiana purchase? That is a lot of money. That is NASA kind of money. SpaceX must really think that space is the place to be. Our host, Robert, may be right, perhaps America’s space program isn’t the commercial space industry — as I have been saying for a while — but is SpaceX.
I’m not sure that SpaceX will need much infrastructure deals with AI companies, because I think SpaceX could become its own major AI company. SpaceX was a launch company until recently, when internet access became its majority business. AI could outstrip the internet portion of the company, and the Mars colony could look like a minor sideline or even a corporate hobby.
30 or so daily Starship launches, yet launches are a minor part of the business? I can’t believe this comment suggests such an unlikely concept, and it seems embarrassing to post it. But here you are, reading it, so I decided to risk ridicule and embarrassment.
Should be an interesting construction project, as most of Louisiana south of I-10 is swamp. Not much appreciably far above sea level. The Gulf waters and the swamp waters have a, shall we say, a close and intimate relationship, often changing official designations. Should be a fascinating project seeing what they build the infrastructure on, which may be part of what the two retired oil rigs are all about. If they can figure out how to use two, there will be more as the Gulf oilies have a LOT of rigs / platforms that retire over time, though it is ironic that a future as a launch platform for the biggest flying object ever launched on the planet is a retirement job for a production / drilling platform. Best race to watch will be SpaceX ability to get most of this built, online (they are talking about being operational in 2029) before a possible democrat WH, Biden 2.0 shuts them down via regulatory fiat and lawfare. Congratulations to all involved. Cheers –
agimarc wrote: “Should be an interesting construction project, as most of Louisiana south of I-10 is swamp. Not much appreciably far above sea level. The Gulf waters and the swamp waters have a, shall we say, a close and intimate relationship, often changing official designations. Should be a fascinating project seeing what they build the infrastructure on, …”
Boca Chica/Starbase is also built in a coastal swamp, and Kennedy Space Center as well as Canaveral Space Force Base, so the Louisiana conditions are not particularly new or much more challenging than other spaceports that SpaceX is familiar with.
The biggest problem with a Gulf coast launch site is…HURRICANES.
“The biggest problem with a Gulf coast launch site is…HURRICANES.”
That’s every bit as true of Cape Canaveral, though,
That’s the price you pay for east-facing coastal sites that give you low inclination orbits. But so far, that’s been a price worth paying.
Anyway, it’s pretty obvious that the kind of launch facilities that SpaceX is building in the new version for Starship could take a hit from a Cat 5 without any substantial damage. The real threat is probably going to be storm surge, but it sounds like building up a coastal barrier is going to be their first objective anyway.
“SpaceX also today announced that the Falcon 9 launch today from Cape Canaveral was the last launch of a [Starlink] Falcon 9 from Florida.”
Clearly, SpaceX is confident in its ability to start launching Starlink V3 on Starship in the coming months!
An interesting side note about the return of Starship 40
SpaceX Starship 40: The Process of Loading a Rocket at Sea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTIaZaDn-84
I wonder what other businesses will be drawn to service the area.
Back when there was this thing called “disposable income” (I know, crazy, right?) one of my favorite attractions were what were called Daniel Boone War Canoe rides where animatronic Indians looked to shoot arrows at you.