SpaceX is buying and developing a massive ~136,000-acre (roughly 212 square miles) tract of coastal marshland in Vermilion Parish, near Pecan Island and Freshwater City. This land is primarily owned by ExxonMobil (with surface management by the Vermilion Corporation) and lies along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, about 10 miles inland from the Gulf but with direct water access. This location is good for high volume launches into the Gulf of America.
They have not started construction which will take about 2 years. There are photos of the second mechazilla launch tower being built at LC37A in Florida. Those show what this will look like. The LC37A SpaceX construction started Nov 2025 and will be completed early in 2027. LC37A already had cement and roads and other launch sites in the area. The Louisiana property acquisition must be finalized and there is land site preparation needed.
SpaceX investor Larry Goldberg has analyzed the site and believes it will become the primary SpaceX Starship launch facility.
Louisiana state officials (including Sen. Bob Hensgens and Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration) have been actively courting this with major incentives. Louisiana will give tax breaks/rebates for aerospace projects, legal immunity from nuisance lawsuits, critical infrastructure protections, and efforts to streamline permitting.
SpaceX representatives attended a state summit with the governor’s team and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in mid-2026 focused on aerospace permitting.
Hensgens stated in late June 2026 that negotiations had advanced significantly, with high probability of a transformative project and potential rocket launches south of Pecan Island.
Launch Profile and Downrange Safety
Normally, launch sites need safe downrange areas (primarily ocean or unpopulated land) for stage separations, booster returns, potential aborts, and debris in case of failure. The Louisiana property works well for southerly launches over the Gulf of Mexico.
Key advantages for launches
Primary trajectories for Southerly azimuths (roughly 115°–190°+ from north, depending on exact pad location). This puts the rocket over the open Gulf for a long distance before approaching land (potentially the Yucatán Peninsula or further). This mirrors Boca Chica/Starbase operations in Texas.
Excellent downrange safety over water for most of the ascent and early flight phases.
Good access to a range of useful orbits: near-polar/sun-synchronous (valuable for Starlink and other missions) and certain lower-inclination LEO paths (with possible doglegs). Experts note it sits “nicely looking south” with a long unpopulated path over the Gulf and parts of Mexico.
Large contiguous land allows for big exclusion/buffer zones on the ground (e.g., hundreds or thousands of acres around pads).
Easy barge transport via the Intracoastal Waterway directly from Starbase, Texas — no need to go around the open ocean or through the Panama Canal for hardware movement or recovery.
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I wonder how much SpaceX has researched coastal subsidence in Vermilion Parish. Nearby Freshwater City is not a city and it has no fresh water unless the Corps of Engineers opens the lock that connects Freshwater Bayou (and the Intracoastal Waterway) to the Gulf of Mexico. The area is largely uninhabited because it’s so vulnerable to hurricanes. The land is just a few feet above sea level, and is sinking at an alarming rate. A hurricane will push a storm surge inland for many miles because the land is flat and mostly semi-compacted sediment from the Mississippi River. As it compacts, the soil subsides. Elon can put a Tesla in orbit on a whim, but he will face some remarkable environmental problems from this location. Louisiana has already lost coastal marshland equivalent in size to Connecticut, and loses 25-35 square miles a year, according to NOAA ( https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/underwater-land-loss-coastal-louisiana-1932 ). Subsidence is worst in southeast Louisiana, but Vermilion Parish is also vulnerable. A former Governor of Louisiana, Mike Foster, had a hunting camp on Pecan Island, which is the closest settlement to the proposed SpaceX launch facility. Gov. Foster’s camp had many feet of water in it from Hurricanes Rita and Ike. A workforce necessary for a launch facility of this size will have a long commute, to say the least. A trillionaire can engineer some quick-fix solutions to stabilize the launch site, but I think this location is a huge gamble even on the short term, and doomed for the long term.
[ … that’s an interesting location between Houston and New Orleans and a launch base should improve the living conditions within the surroundings (with remembering to the big hurricanes within the Gulf)?
… and by the way, are there ideas for utilizing the huge back pressure of the starting rockets for pushing the trench channel steam/water (from starts before) back into the reservoir for the deluge system or even using stationary rocket turbines for up-lift forward-pressure from ground?
AI:
“The engines burn roughly
16–18 tonnes of propellant per second at liftoff.
So simply ‘shutting off’ the booster for the first:
5 seconds saves roughly 80–90 tonnes
10 seconds saves roughly 170 tonnes
20 seconds saves roughly 340 tonnes
Time Altitude Upward velocity
5 s ≈70 m ≈28 m/s (100 km/h)
10 s ≈280 m ≈57 m/s (205 km/h)
20 s ≈1.15–1.25 km ≈120 m/s (430 km/h)”
AI prefers a maglev assist system for propulsion support (but also on long tracks).
There could be an about 10-15t(?) liftload benefit (for 170t rocket fuel saved, for a first 10s), but safety is priority.
If that’s about 50 stationary ground mounted rocket engines (‘producing 75 MN upward’), it’s about weather that’s worth the effort for higher starting cadences? (thx) ]
The large uninhabited buffer zone in the continental US is a major feature for a high volume Starship launch site. The other sites including Vandenberg and Starbase Texas are just too populated near the launch site for multiple daily launch cadence. It seems like something they arrived at after deciding that ocean platforms were too much problem solving and expense if there was any viable land alternative.