SpaceX plans $100bn Starbase Louisiana, shifts Starlink to Starship
What happened
SpaceX and Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry announced a $100bn "Starbase Louisiana" launch-and-manufacturing megasite in Vermilion Parish — the largest capital investment in Louisiana history. Construction starts 2027, first launch NET 2029, 12+ towers targeting 30 Starship flights/day at full build-out; initial hiring 3,000+ jobs, a promotional estimate floats up to ~10,000. Same day, SpaceX confirmed (VP Launch Ops Kiko Dontchev) that Tuesday's Falcon 9 Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral SLC-40 was the last Florida Starlink mission flown on Falcon 9 — all future Florida Starlink launches move to Starship, ending a run of roughly 260 Falcon 9 Starlink missions from the Cape since May 2019; the Cape Canaveral workforce has already been refocused onto Starship.
Read-across for SES
Reinforces the launch-supply/cost-curve advantage that gates every non-SpaceX constellation buildout through ~2028, including SES's own meoSphere/O3b mPOWER launch manifest (Launch bottleneck thread) — a 2029 NET doesn't move the near-term bottleneck, but the scale of commitment signals SpaceX keeps prioritizing Starship capex over near-term rideshare capacity relief for rivals.
As the brief filed it
[AGE: ~8h] SpaceX + Louisiana Gov. Landry announce $100bn "Starbase Louisiana" megasite; SpaceX confirms Cape Canaveral Starlink launches move from Falcon 9 to Starship — doubling down on Starship-scale buildout while gating the near-term launch supply the rest of the industry (incl. SES's own manifest) depends on.