SALT LAKE CITY — SpaceX announced plans Aug. 25 to build a massive new spaceport for its Starship launch vehicle in Louisiana as the company starts to wind down Falcon 9 launches.

SpaceX and the Louisiana state government unveiled plans for “Starbase Louisiana,” a launch site the company will build in Vermilion Parish, located on the Gulf Coast south of Lafayette. The facility will be built on about 125,000 acres (50,600 hectares) of land in an area called Pecan Island.

State officials said SpaceX would spend $100 billion to develop Starbase Louisiana, which will ultimately include 10 Starship launch pads and related infrastructure. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2027, with first launches there no earlier than 2029.

“Make no mistake about it. Today is nothing short of a transformational moment,” Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said at an event announcing the project, citing its impact on the local and state economy. “I want you to understand that today is like an inflection point in time in Louisiana’s history.”

The announcement, though, provided few details about how exactly that $100 billion would be spent or over what period. By comparison, SpaceX said in May, in the prospectus for its initial public offering, that it had spent more than $15 billion on the overall Starship program to date.

There are few projects that offer a comparison to Starbase Louisiana. Other major launch sites have been primarily developed by the federal government over decades. Denver International Airport, which covers 34,000 acres, cost $4.8 billion when it was completed in 1995, or about $10.5 billion in current dollars.

Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, said at the event that Starbase Louisiana would be a “clean-sheet” design intended for high flight rates. The company has two Starbase launch pads at its Starbase, Texas, facility and is building three additional pads in Florida, one at Launch Complex 39A and two at Space Launch Complex 37.

“By starting with a clean-sheet design, we’re planning to build a self-sustaining spaceport with its own propellant production, power generation, deepwater shipping capabilities, vehicle processing facilities and probably an airport,” she said.

The company does not plan to use the site to build Starship vehicles, which will likely be manufactured in Texas and Florida and transported by ship to the site. Shotwell added that the Louisiana site will have “ready access” to natural gas to use as propellant for the vehicle.

The facility will create thousands of jobs, but there was some confusion about how many. The statement from the state government said Starbase Louisiana would support 3,000 jobs, but SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk, in a video shown at the event, offered a much larger number. “We’re going to bring, I think, probably north of 10,000 really exciting jobs to Louisiana,” he said.

“As part of our commitment to the state, we expect to create at least 3,000 permanent jobs. Elon said 10 [thousand],” Shotwell said. “Based on our experience in Starbase, Texas, it’s probably closer to 10 than 3.”

SpaceX started looking about seven years ago for a “high-rate” launch site able to support thousands of launches a year, said Sheila McCorkle, the company’s vice president for Starship legal and regulatory issues, in the video about the project.

“There’s kind of a few places on Earth where we can do what we need to do to launch Starship fully reusable at rate,” she said. The company needed locations along coasts away from large population centers, access to natural gas for propellant and launch trajectories that can serve the company’s missions. “There’s really few places on Earth where you can do this, and Louisiana happens to be a perfect candidate for that.”

While SpaceX said it had been looking for years for a site and that Louisiana was the “perfect site,” discussions between the company and the state government only started earlier this year. The discussions that would lead to Starbase Louisiana started “with a SpaceX phone call on Feb. 5 of this year,” said Susan Bourgeois, secretary for the state’s economic development department, at the event. The final agreement for the site, she added, was signed just before the event.

The state offered SpaceX “a competitive incentives package,” according to a statement, but did not disclose details. SpaceX, in lieu of paying taxes to Vermilion Parish, will provide the parish an annual payment of $25 million that will grow over time, with a total estimated value of $820 million over 25 years.

SpaceX scaling back Falcon 9 launches

The announcement took place several hours after a Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying 29 Starlink satellites. It was the 100th Falcon 9 launch this year, including 46 from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40.

Most of those Cape Canaveral launches have been of Starlink satellites, but that is changing. In a statement on social media after the launch, Kiko Donchev, vice president of launch at SpaceX, said that mission was the last planned Falcon 9 launch of Starlink satellites from Florida.

“From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship,” he wrote. “The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg.” The majority of Falcon 9 launches this year have been from Vandenberg.

SpaceX has not given a firm date for starting Starship launches from Florida, with all of the vehicle’s launches to date taking place from Texas. With many Falcon 9 launches from Florida carrying Starlink satellites, the decision means a significant drop in overall launches from Florida in the near term, particularly with both Blue Origin’s New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan currently grounded.

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