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#1 Yesterday 07:07:27
- tahanson43206
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Starbase Louisiana
The article in Post #3 is about a large space port that might be built in Louisiana.
If built, this would be the largest spaceport in the world, with flight tempo approaching 30 launches per day.
The site is reported to be attractive for sun synchronous launches.
This topic was chosen because the entire concept is a business proposal by the SpaceX corporation.
The site is a wetlands that is full of wildlife, and there are some folks in Louisiana who will be interested in protecting that wildlife from this advanced industrial operation. The permitting process is expected to take years.
SpaceX has (apparently) committed itself to being good stewards of the environment, but how well they perform remains to be seen.
The State of Louisiana leadership appears to be in favor of this project, because it would definitely bring a flow of business to the state.
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#2 Yesterday 07:08:16
- tahanson43206
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Re: Starbase Louisiana
This post is reserved for an index to posts that may be contributed by NewMars members.
Index:
Post #3: Opening report from CNN about the proposed space port
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#3 Yesterday 07:10:19
- tahanson43206
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Re: Starbase Louisiana
This post contains a report from CNN about a proposed space port in Louisiana.
SpaceX plans to build the ‘biggest launch site on Earth’ for $100 billion in Louisiana
By
Jackie Wattles
Updated 14 hr ago << 2026/08/26SpaceX's Starship rocket lifts off for a test flight from Starbase, Texas, on July 24. Eric Gay/AP/File
SpaceX on Tuesday unveiled plans to construct a massive, $100 billion spaceport in Louisiana, where the company plans to launch its gargantuan Starship rocket thousands of times per year.
Construction of the spaceport is expected to begin by the end of next year near the southern coast of Louisiana’s Vermilion Parish, with the first launch targeted as soon as 2029, according to an economic development website.
Such a development would mark a dramatic shift for SpaceX and the US rocket industry — making Louisiana, which has never before hosted an orbital launch, perhaps the busiest launch hub on the planet.
The new SpaceX campus will be dubbed “Starbase, Louisiana” — borrowing the name of SpaceX’s recently incorporated company town in South Texas. Starbase, Texas, is the current home to Starship’s testing and development facilities and the spot from which 13 test flights have launched to varying degrees of success.
The Louisiana location, however, would host flights of the Starship rocket once its operational, having proven it can safely haul cargo to orbit. SpaceX also plans to land and recover every piece of its Starship rockets — including the upper spacecraft, which has never been done before — in order to allow the rockets to be rapidly reused and drive down the cost of each launch.
That means Louisiana would not only become a hub for launches, but it would become home to numerous towers — standing hundreds of feet tall — that would be used to recapture rockets and spacecraft as they return from space.
“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 CEO Elon Musk said on his social media platform, X, on Tuesday.
During an announcement event in Louisiana Tuesday, SpaceX’s chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, also described the project as “a self-sustaining spaceport with its own propellant production, power generation, deep water shipping capabilities, vehicle processing facilities, and probably an airport.”
Louisiana’s ‘worst kept secret’
SpaceX had been quietly working on its spaceport plans alongside Louisiana elected officials for months. Company leaders have traveled to the state to scope out potential locations, prompting one local news outlet to refer to the project as the state’s “worst kept secret.”
State governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, billed the project as an offer of “a permanent future and lasting prosperity.”
“For generations, industries came to Louisiana not to build lasting prosperity, but to extract wealth,” Landry said. “Too often, Louisiana was left with the scars, while others enjoyed the profit. Today, what Elon Musk and his team is offering Louisiana is different.”
Much about the plans remain to be seen. Starship is not yet operational. The company is expected to launch its most important test flight to date as soon as September — a mission that could send the rocket to orbit for the first time. Additional testing will be necessary to sort out how the rocket’s upper stage can be landed and flown again.
A spaceport of such size and scale as the Louisiana project will also likely face extensive regulatory reviews: “The project will go through all applicable environmental, wetlands, natural resource and launch-related reviews,” a project website confirms.
Such reviews related to SpaceX’s facilities in Texas — a far smaller complex than the planned Louisiana site — took nearly a decade to complete. And some local environmental advocacy groups continue to battle the company in Texas courts over the impacts of rocket testing on the community.
Shotwell said Tuesday that SpaceX plans to keep “very large portions” of Starbase Louisiana’s 125,000 acres of land “untouched, so that high-value wetlands stay habitat and don’t become infrastructure.”
“We will help fund protection, restoration, and stewardship while we build,” Shotwell said.
The announcement is the latest in a long list of displays of confidence that Starship will transform SpaceX as a company. Already, SpaceX has said it’s begun to phase out use of its workhorse Falcon 9 rockets, which are currently the most prolific launch vehicles in the world, in favor of using Starship for most missions once it becomes operational.
Earlier on Tuesday, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, Kiko Dontchev, said a Falcon 9 rocket that took flight the same morning would be the last ever to carry SpaceX Starlink satellites from Florida — an area due East of Orlando that is currently home to the world’s busiest spaceport across Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Space Force Center.
“From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship,” Dontchev said. “The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg. Super proud of this incredible team. You’ve made Falcon 9 the most reliable launch vehicle in history. You also helped build the largest low-Earth orbit satellite constellation providing connectivity to millions around the world, and you’ve set the foundation for what’s next.”
SpaceX’s plans include continuing to fly Starship out of Texas, and it may begin flights from Florida as soon as this year. But the envisioned plans for Louisiana would make it by far the largest base of operations for the rocket.
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#4 Yesterday 11:30:16
- Void
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Re: Starbase Louisiana
I think that wildlife refuges are likely to be very compatible, as they help to keep people from living near the launch facilities.
As far as toxic effects to, marshes produce Methane as a natural thing, and Oxygen is of course natural.
I expect that there will be a push to make it grow fast as it has national security implications.
The left of course being sympathetic sometimes to un-American things, will try to be a catspaw for unfriendly powers in the world.
I think that public is starting to get wise to the games of the left though.
Ending Pending 
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#5 Yesterday 17:31:00
- SpaceNut
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Re: Starbase Louisiana
if I recall the oil rigs were to be converted for methane processing and possible launch platforms.
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#6 Today 09:15:53
- Void
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Re: Starbase Louisiana
Eventually with that many launch towers, they could launch 6-7 Starships almost all at the same time.
Potentially then to transfer propellants to the one that is a Lunar Starship.
For this to work then 5-6 of the Starships have to be Expendable. I believe that they would be Version 4, and might lift at least 200-250 tons of propellants.
The question then is what do you do with the 5-6 "Expendable" Starships?
I am looking at them being scrapped, and converted into propellants for Neumann Drive and Magdrive propulsion systems.
That would then be 500-700 tons of metals, and these Metal>Plasma drives may be 10 times or more efficient with propellant than is Metha-Lox. So, the equivalent of perhaps 5000 to 7000 tons or better, of propulsion mass, presuming these ships can be scrapped to produce such propellants.
This might allow slow acceleration sending of Cargos to Lunar Orbit.
Ending Pending
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#7 Today 11:25:53
- Void
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Re: Starbase Louisiana
Per a request by (th):
Query: "SpaceX may use expendable tankers to fill Lunar Starship?"
Quote:
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SpaceX’s Expendable Tanker Starships for Lunar Starship Refueling
SpaceX is exploring the use of expendable Starship tanker variants to help fuel its lunar Human Landing System (HLS) more quickly and simply, potentially reducing the need for full reusability in the early Artemis missions.Current Lunar Mission Architecture
NASA’s Artemis III and later missions plan to:Launch a Starship depot into low Earth orbit (LEO) carrying propellant for the HLS.
Use Starship tanker spacecraft to refuel the depot multiple times before the HLS departs for the Moon
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
.The HLS then rendezvouses with Orion in a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) and lands astronauts on the lunar surface
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
.This approach requires multiple tanker flights to top up the depot, which can be time-consuming and complex if the tankers are fully reusable.
Why Expendable Tankers?
A recent SpaceX update suggested that “expendable Starships” could accelerate lunar missions
Ars Technica
Ars Technica
+1
. Key reasons include:Reduced complexity: Expendable tankers don’t need the full reusability systems (heat shields, landing flaps, advanced plumbing, and recovery hardware), lowering cost and development risk
elonbuzz.com
elonbuzz.com
.Faster turnaround: Without the need for refurbishment, tankers can be used for multiple missions in a row, speeding up propellant delivery to the depot.
Simplified mission profile: NASA is pushing for “nimble” plans, and expendable tankers fit that by avoiding major hardware changes to the existing Starship design
Ars Technica
Ars Technica
.How It Would Work
Tanker variant: A Starship upper stage configured to carry propellant to LEO, rendezvous with the depot, transfer fuel, and then be discarded.Depot variant: A Starship without crew systems, optimized for storing methane and oxygen for the HLS.
HLS variant: The crewed lander, stripped of Earth-return systems, optimized for lunar operations
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
+1
.
Implications
If adopted, expendable tankers could:Shorten the Artemis III timeline by reducing depot refueling delays.
Lower mission costs by avoiding reusability investments in early flights.
Allow NASA and SpaceX to test lunar operations with a simpler, faster-to-deploy system before committing to full reusability.
In short, SpaceX is considering using expendable Starship tankers to refuel the lunar depot, which could make the HLS mission faster, cheaper, and less complex in the near term
There are some interesting wrinkles in this sort of plan.
At first to do this, SpaceX would have to crank out several brand-new minimal Starships. This would be to get the ball rolling as per the Moon.
But later it might be that they could convert used and outdated hardware to the purpose.
They have done this with "Falcon Heavy-Center Core". They use it as a Falcon 9 a number of times before they put it into a Falcon Heavy stack. Then they use the center core as expendable to increase the Falcon Heavy lift capabilities.
So, later on as Full-Fledged Starships might become outdated in model, and have been used a number of times they could strip the heat shield off of them and the flaps and motors and then use one expendable one time.
As they would build up a history of the number of repeats a ship can do, they might retire them to orbit this way. Similar thing for the engines.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Perhaps at first they will crash these into the Pacific when done with them, but I feel it would only make sense to scrap them in orbit to make metal propellants or to make parts for Satellites. Possibly they could make parts for Starlink or Starmind Satellites.
If they are converted to propellants, then they might be used in either Neumann Drives or Magdrives.
Ending Pending
Last edited by Void (Today 11:34:49)
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