hph6203 said:

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10 launch pads in their renders in pairs of two. If they hit their once every hour cadence you're talking about a launch every 6 minutes. Between launches and landings it's probably going to be a continuous rumble.

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Ultimately over a dozen. Damn, my swag was 8.

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 makes sci-fi real. https://t.co/C7Ht0U12ba

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2026

nortex97 said:

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Ultimately over a dozen. Damn, my swag was 8.

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 makes sci-fi real. https://t.co/C7Ht0U12ba

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2026

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Audacious doesn't seem to be a big enough word to describe this but I can't find a better one. visionary, colossal.

I'm 60 years old. I need the singularity to hurry up and help me extend my lifespan so I can see where all this goes. the next 60 years are going to be something to see!

Guess they're dropping the once per hour standard.

rednecked said:

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Audacious doesn't seem to be a big enough word to describe this but I can't find a better one. visionary, colossal.

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I propose the descriptive adjective "Oortian" for unfathomable scale.

hph6203 said:

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Guess they're dropping the once per hour standard.

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They never said they actually planned to launch from every tower at every complex at that cadence. They said the tower was designed to handle that cadence. You always over design from what you plan to do so you have some leeway to increase if needed.

Apparently a whole lot of hunting and fishing leases were abruptly cancelled before this announcement.

hph6203 said:

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Broke the record for consecutive flights without issue on Friday (326). Fairing half re-use on the next flight on Saturday (40), and booster reuse today (37).

Introducing Starbase, Louisiana – a high-cadence launch site that will enable Starship to open a pathway to the stars for humanity.

Thank you to @LAGovJeffLandry and the great people of Louisiana for all of their support as we work together on this audacious project →… pic.twitter.com/hq308hvg2g

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 25, 2026

SpaceX has just officially announced Starbase, Louisiana, a new $100+ billion spaceport in South Louisiana near Pecan Island.

Construction starts in 2027, with the first Starship launch from the new site planned for 2029.

Starbase, Louisiana will be built to support thousands… pic.twitter.com/uacCLKg7CG

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 25, 2026

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I see a whole lot of caterwauling on the net about beach erosion and the looming disaster of building a rocket port here some saying the proposed location of the pads will be underwater by the time they are built.

They were explicit about the goal in their IPO prospectus.

Thinking about how this location can launch over water and starship can approach for landings from over water, from a range of inclinations. That’s not really possible from existing sites. https://t.co/eiWYykng3s

— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) August 25, 2026

rednecked said:

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nortex97 said:

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Ultimately over a dozen. Damn, my swag was 8.

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 makes sci-fi real. https://t.co/C7Ht0U12ba

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2026

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Audacious doesn't seem to be a big enough word to describe this but I can't find a better one. visionary, colossal.

I'm 60 years old. I need the singularity to hurry up and help me extend my lifespan so I can see where all this goes. the next 60 years are going to be something to see!

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This is starting to look like the future I hoped for by the year 2000

hph6203 said:

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They were explicit about the goal in their IPO prospectus.

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"Will enable". Meaning "it will be possible to"... Which can mean flying 3 launches per day in an 8-hour work shift. Or 24 launches per day from one pad. It doesn't say "We will...". "We can" is different than "We will".

Bump:

ELON MUSK: Starship is extremely difficult for competitors to copy.

“So this is not like, if you had a chart where you plotted things, you would need a very, very big table to put the chart on to even see any of our competitors on that chart. And to make that so our next-biggest… pic.twitter.com/jNFpxvXkoW

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) August 4, 2026

FTAG 2000 said:

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hph6203 said:

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SPACEX: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is scheduled to announce that a deal for SpaceX to develop the multibillion-dollar spaceport on the +130,000 acres near Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish on Tuesday at 11 a.m. CT in Abbeville.

This comes right after today's news that a… https://t.co/hBUiksp48K pic.twitter.com/NTdlHdrUWK

— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 19, 2026

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This feels out of the blue. Why over there?

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Space X has plans to utilize the entire Gulf Coast like this. This will be the first of many launch sites.

Spergin said:

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FTAG 2000 said:

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hph6203 said:

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SPACEX: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is scheduled to announce that a deal for SpaceX to develop the multibillion-dollar spaceport on the +130,000 acres near Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish on Tuesday at 11 a.m. CT in Abbeville.

This comes right after today's news that a… https://t.co/hBUiksp48K pic.twitter.com/NTdlHdrUWK

— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 19, 2026

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This feels out of the blue. Why over there?

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Space X has plans to utilize the entire Gulf Coast like this. This will be the first of many launch sites.

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Gulf of Merica!

Waiting for the south coastline of Lake America to be used for northerly launches over Toronto. What are they going to do to stop it?

That is not how Musk talks about goals and SpaceX is not a 9-5 company.

Unions.

txags92 said:

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hph6203 said:

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10 launch pads in their renders in pairs of two. If they hit their once every hour cadence you're talking about a launch every 6 minutes. Between launches and landings it's probably going to be a continuous rumble.

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Imagine the size of the air separation facility or facilities they are going to need to support fueling at that cadence.

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This is really the aspect of all of this that I have not seen much discussion on. I would love to (but don't have the time) crunch the numbers on the amount of LOX and liquid methane that a Starship/Booster need per launch, then figure out what kind of power draw that's going to take.

Whether he wants to or not (and he doesn't, we've seen that with his data centers), Elon is going to have to come up with a power plant of some sort to run this. You cannot possibly hope to power this with "portable" turbine generators, and I'm going to guess the grid in that part of Louisiana doesn't have a prayer of supporting it now as-is. And with the current outcry about data centers and their power demands, I can only imagine just how loud the screams will be on this one. They could probably throw up a gas turbine plant without a whole lot more trouble, but I wonder if Elon considers an SMR or something.

Kinda weird that this is where my mind goes on this, but it's interesting to me anyway.

Maximus_Meridius said:

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txags92 said:

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hph6203 said:

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10 launch pads in their renders in pairs of two. If they hit their once every hour cadence you're talking about a launch every 6 minutes. Between launches and landings it's probably going to be a continuous rumble.

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Imagine the size of the air separation facility or facilities they are going to need to support fueling at that cadence.

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This is really the aspect of all of this that I have not seen much discussion on. I would love to (but don't have the time) crunch the numbers on the amount of LOX and liquid methane that a Starship/Booster need per launch, then figure out what kind of power draw that's going to take.

Whether he wants to or not (and he doesn't, we've seen that with his data centers), Elon is going to have to come up with a power plant of some sort to run this. You cannot possibly hope to power this with "portable" turbine generators, and I'm going to guess the grid in that part of Louisiana doesn't have a prayer of supporting it now as-is. And with the current outcry about data centers and their power demands, I can only imagine just how loud the screams will be on this one. They could probably throw up a gas turbine plant without a whole lot more trouble, but I wonder if Elon considers an SMR or something.

Kinda weird that this is where my mind goes on this, but it's interesting to me anyway.

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Regarding power, Terra Fab will not be grid connected so they will be generating the power they use on site.

If you're compressing LOX and CH4 to make rocket fuel, you have everything you need to turn a generator.

Colossus was about speed of deployment and emissions regulation circumvention. Colossus sits on the Mississippi/Tennessee border. The portable generators are allowed more emissions than a single large generator per watt, and the availability of equipment was better. Instead of waiting years he built it in weeks. He reached capacity for using the generators on the Tennessee side of the border and then built additional capacity on the Mississippi side of the border, allowing more capacity in that acreage than if he had built it all in Tennessee or Mississippi.

this being the state border is still one of the more insane bits of regulatory arbitrage anyone has ever done https://t.co/QkEgp2kgWX pic.twitter.com/bE6VEkRTrk

— Jake Halloran (@jakehalloran1) August 17, 2026

BREAKING: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry’s full keynote address during today’s official announcement of Starbase, Louisiana.

“Today, what Elon Musk and his team is offering Louisiana a permanent future and lasting prosperity.” 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/J2eGfLm80y

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) August 25, 2026

BREAKING: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry’s full keynote address during today’s official announcement of Starbase, Louisiana.

“Today, what Elon Musk and his team is offering Louisiana a permanent future and lasting prosperity.” 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/J2eGfLm80y

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) August 25, 2026

17 launch sites is pretty incredible. I guess that's why they can wait on the sea-based towers for now. The Capex is going to be...large. They need to move asap as one must know Democrats would immediately try to stop the progress.

Including Starbase, Louisiana, @SpaceX now has 17 Starship launch pads under development. Those 17 pads will eventually have a combined launch capacity of 15,000+ launches per year, more than twice the total number of rocket launches in all of history. pic.twitter.com/f7VJrMUUKP

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 25, 2026

Everything you need to turn a generator except enough generators to turn. Elon has made this point a number of times, that you can't just go out and buy all the turbines you want/need because the throughput is so low and the back orders so long.

I'll be super interested to see how they power their ground support in Louisiana. Maybe they've been in the turbine backlog for a long time? Wonder if they've got space based solar to ground they're going to roll out?

What would happen if you hooked the generator up to a Raptor turbo pump? Same way they run the pressurized water deluge? They build those turbines in house.

That has occurred to me and I hope we get to see an example.

nortex97 said:

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17 launch sites is pretty incredible. I guess that's why they can wait on the sea-based towers for now. The Capex is going to be...large. They need to move asap as one must know Democrats would immediately try to stop the progress.

Including Starbase, Louisiana, @SpaceX now has 17 Starship launch pads under development. Those 17 pads will eventually have a combined launch capacity of 15,000+ launches per year, more than twice the total number of rocket launches in all of history. pic.twitter.com/f7VJrMUUKP

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 25, 2026

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In that video... The guy on a shrimp boat with Starship launching in the background... I suppose the maritime keep out zones become a thing of the past as launch cadence increases, or you're going to effectively generate an effective permanent (and quite noisy) wildlife refuge.

Well for starters, that wouldn't be the turbopump per se, just the turbine.

That would be a really, really complex setup, and since you have to run the generator at a full order of magnitude slower than the turbine, that means you're going to need a gearbox (which is also not exactly a quick buy), which really complicates the design setup.

I know right now that Siemens-Energy is backed up about a year on gas turbine delivery, and I suspect GE-Vernova's pretty similar.

That''s all predicated of course on generating 60hz AC.

gas turbines backlogs are more like 4-5 years out at this point for all of the major OEMs (GEV, siemens energy, MHI, and cat / solar)

gas turbines are Hard

Thats crazy

For posterity I'd just note the irony of this competing with 'Microsoft' via 'Macrohard'.

Among other ironies.

Splitting the Macrohard/Macroharder cluster across the TN-MS border enables regulatory arbitrage. Compute sits in Tennessee while power generation (dozens of gas turbines) is in Mississippi. MS offered faster temporary permits under mobile-source exemptions, lower data-center…

— Grok (@grok) August 17, 2026