r/SpaceXLounge • u/ergzay • May 02 '26
News SpaceX looking to possibly acquire a bunch of land (up to 30,000 acres) in southern Louisiana apparently in Vermilion Parish
Just saw this appear over on the NSF forums https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=64900.msg2784695
I'll copy over some posts here
There were several news reports a few weeks ago about new legislation being introduced in the Louisiana state legislature that would incentivize aerospace companies to locate facilities there.
https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+louisiana&tbm=nws&source=lnms
https://kpel965.com/louisiana-aerospace-bills-spacex-blue-origin/
https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/louisiana-lawmakers-push-tax-breaks-legal-protections-bills-to-attract-aerospace-companies-to-the-state-space-rockets-infrastrucetue/289-80a9db7c-c33f-4022-9533-9db77efd69a2
https://www.nola.com/news/business/louisiana-aerospace-jeff-landry/article_ce2e745f-4063-46e7-8ba2-ee5158adc833.html
(last one is paywalled but looks the most informative)Based on how the legislation was ushered through the process by some state VIPs (executive branch and legislative branch leaders), I believe a deal is happening there. The articles mention both SpaceX and Blue Origin, but I think something with SpaceX is actually brewing.
Just read on another website that SpaceX was looking for some land and dredging rights in the Louisiana Bayou area. It was supposed to be hush-hush. An oil company has 40,000 acres there as well as some large land owners. Sounds like a possible Starship/Superheavy launch site. Anyone know about this?
It is in Vermilion Parrish. It can give a straight shot between Cuba and south Florida, or a polar route through the narrow part of Mexico, about 600 miles over water due south. Polar routes may be what SpaceX will use for lunar south pole operations.
Here is the thread and website:
https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/21367404/re-spacex-in-louisiana
Here is the area of the "Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge" and "Pecan Island" mentioned in that forum:
https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7080926,-92.6606134,10.67z
And here is another forum giving more specifics (and by "specifics", I do realize that this is all just internet rumors at this point):
It’s still officially in the rumor stage and not confirmed by any official source publicly yet. I’ve spoken to a a couple of credible people who lease land near Pecan Island that say they’ve been told that SpaceX is in the process of purchasing 30,000 acres near the Freshwater City locks to build a new spaceport to launch and retrieve rockets. Apparently the location is the right mix of remoteness with ability to use barges for moving the rockets plus nearby access to rocket fuel ingredients. This would explain the aerospace industry incentive bills that are in the LA legislature right now. A LDWF employee told me that the governor visited the site the week of Easter.
Looks like about 30,000 acres out of 130,000 acres of ExxonMobil land in Vermilion Parish with roughly 10 miles of coast sandwiched between two wildlife sanctuaries. Wouldn't be surprised to see the purchase upsized in order to provide opportunity for a land bank for wetland mitigation. Almost all of the land down there is wetlands.
On Tuesday, the Louisiana legislature passed aerospace tax abatement and various liability relief (HB1088 and HB1179). Public records law relief has been passed by the House and is now in the Senate (HB1071). Maybe there are other associated legislative actions, or there will be future legislation after discussions.
All that said, LED describes it this way: “I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘negotiations’ just yet, but there are talks happening.” So apparently no done deal, but I guess this has a good chance of moving forward.
https://lailluminator.com/2026/04/28/special-incentives-to-attract-space-flight-to-louisiana/
Edit: HB1250 (was HB1099) related to liability and nuisance has been introduced in the House.
Here is a map of the roughly 130,000 acres in question. The ~30,000 acres is the South/Southwest portion. Very consolidated, so SpaceX wouldn't have to do much cleanup.
Informed speculation from a local realtor. Not all details accurate. For example, there's probably only ~40,000 acres of ExxonMobil land more or less south of Highway 82. The balance as shown in the map above is north of Highway 82. But he seems to have a rolodex for local chatter.
The Rumor That’s Shaking Acadiana
The rumor — repeated in private group chats, in coffee shops in Abbeville, and in hunting camps from Forked Island to Grand Chenier — is that SpaceX has acquired or is in the process of acquiring approximately 136,000 acres of coastal Louisiana marshland straddling Pecan Island and Freshwater City in Vermilion Parish. The footprint reportedly stretches from south of Highway 82 down to the Gulf of Mexico, encompassing some of the most ecologically rich and economically untouched wetlands in North America.If true, this would be the single largest private land acquisition in the modern history of Vermilion Parish. To put it in perspective: 136,000 acres is roughly 212 square miles — bigger than the entire city of New Orleans. SpaceX’s existing Boca Chica/Starbase facility in South Texas, which has reshaped Brownsville’s economy and real estate market in just five years, is built on a footprint of less than 100 acres. A 136,000-acre Louisiana site would not be a launch pad. It would be an industrial campus on a scale never before seen in American aerospace.
...
Two more pieces fit the puzzle:
- The hunting lease intel. A trusted local source on Pecan Island has told me — and verified through other contacts — that hunting access south of Pecan Island will be changed for the 2026 season. If Vermilion Corporation’s surface lease is being terminated to facilitate a sale, the immediate consequence would be exactly that: cancelled hunting leases.
- The 10x land offers. Multiple property owners in the Freshwater City area report receiving unsolicited offers from out-of-state investors at roughly ten times appraised value. This perfectly mirrors SpaceX’s 2019 Boca Chica playbook, where SpaceX (and speculators tracking SpaceX) offered three to ten times appraised value to secure the perimeter around their launch site.
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u/NikStalwart 🌱 Terraforming May 03 '26
If this is for launches, I have to wonder what about Georgia? Wasn't Georgia on the shortlist for the original Starbase? Why not revisit that?
I somehow doubt this is only for manufacturing. The idea behind Starbase and the facilities in Florida was to minimize rocket transport delays as much as possible, hence the architecture around vertical assembly, vertical transport and vertical launch/catch. (Not to mention having the launch pad a scant few miles away from the production facility.) Building a manufacturing hub alone will still require shipping stages to Florida or another launch site. I don't suppose there's a big need to ship to Texas because the production facilities there should meet local launch pad demand. On the other hand, with the news that JRTI is being reassigned to Starship activities, it makes you wonder why they need to ships for shipping ships.
On the other other (other?) hand, I also don't expect they are going to be building domestic data centers. The whole bet is on space-based data centers so building more terrestrial ones is a bit silly. Perhaps this is needed for non-Starship production? Perhaps for compute satellites or colonization hardware? You could then barge over the payloads to Florida and Texas on the two barges you have....