Space Exploration Technologies announced plans for a roughly $100+ billion Starship complex in southern Louisiana.
The company said the new "Starbase" near Pecan Island will include propellant production, power generation, deep‑water shipping, vehicle processing and an airport, with construction set to begin next year, the first Starship launch from the site planned for 2029 and the project creating 3,000 jobs.
"We think megatons to orbit & beyond is a critical piece of the K2 puzzle," Elon Musk wrote in response to a post about the site, linking it to a broader energy‑and‑compute ambition.
Musk also reiterated a longer‑running idea that Tesla's Optimus could act as a self‑replicating, or "Von Neumann," layer, saying a fleet of 1 million Optimus robots alongside 1 GW of solar production could drive "galaxy‑wide" expansion while SpaceX scales launch infrastructure.
SpaceX has been reported as developing 17 Starship launch pads that could eventually yield a combined capacity of 15,000+ launches per year, a technical scale Musk has tied to ambitious off‑Earth industry goals.
The announcement stitches an audacious robotic and energy vision onto a concrete Starship build schedule that the company plans to start next year.
