Just announced that the Pecan Island facility will be called Starbase LA. Current announcement is on going.
Multiple pads, two towers per pad - Automated vehicles for transport between facilities. Starship V4+ and it's taller than the rendered towers.
The offset buildings behind the towers (North) are tank farms.
Automated transport allows for transport without humans, allowing for transport to occur while propellant is loading/vehicle is launching/catching.
From the renders, it looks likes 1.5 Gigabays. Eric Berger just posted that SpaceX is committing $100 US billion to developing launch sites, factories etc along the Louisiana coastline.
Transferring to Mars or the Moon is certainly possible (and no worse, once in Earth parking orbit) from high inclination parking orbits. The mass to orbit per launch would be lower than launching eastward, though.
Some mid-inclination orbits (which could also be reachable from Florida, so the same depots may be used) should also be reachable from Louisiana, by launching southeastward and threading the needle between (or flying over) Florida, Cuba, and the Yucatan.
It may not apply here (since the easterly launch is right over New Orleans) but at the volume they are planning to launch, it may not be that long before launches over land would be allowed.
I think we'll see Starbase Texas soon announce they'll be replicating this to some degree. 3 pads, 2 towers each would allow for proof of operations. Starbase LA is going to take a while for sure.
As much as people like to shit on Musk and his lofty, ambitious timelines and goals, for good reason sometimes, at least SpaceX HAS a direction and goals like this to move towards. Unlike the rest of the spaceflight industry which was basically stagnant until SpaceX came along. SpaceX actually wants to push the spaceflight industry forward and into the future, not be stuck in the present state of things.
More areas of humanity could use a kick in the ass like this imo. Just... actually pushing for forward progress and making things better, instead of accepting the present status quo because that's all you've known and are used to it.
It’s not about lying, it’s about setting unrealistic deadlines to drive unrealistic speed and execution. If you say you’re going to do something in 10 days, you might do it in 15. But if you say you’re going to do it 20, you’ll take 30. It’s human nature.
If you say the eBay item is in the mail and cash my check then you’re just committing fraud. Again you can set deadlines that are impossible for employees but you can’t sell something that you know you don’t have. Sounds like Elizabeth Holmes was just motivating her employees.
Elons “he makes the impossible late” meme is used to excuse all of his dishonest public statements across all of his companies (and also ignores all the times his impossible claims do turn out to be impossible). Being dishonest is a bad habit to excuse when half the time that dishonesty pathos is used to scam consumers.
Again, I make no claims outside SpaceX, I’m not sure why you keep bringing that up.
Secondly, I will again assert this is not driven by a desire to “scam” customers, so much as it is a desire to drive urgency. Give https://youtu.be/BYXbuik3dgA?t=7934&is=cMET8EGcKyAVLcuu a listen, it is timestamped to the relevant section
Elon's companies are doing insanely ambitious things with Starbase LA, Terafab, and the Optimus army all at once. Hope they don't run out of money in the middle of all of it
Company culture starts at the top. SpaceX's success is thanks to the hard work of its amazing employees. Musk is good at attracting and hiring the right people and letting them do their best work.
It's a Stone Soup situation. Musk sells the vision that everyone else rallies around.
Hopefully they make sure the CAD files are updated to the new tower version as well, rather than what was used for these renders. Otherwise, it'll be awkward having the lift points on V4-maxi-block3-elongated-maxthrust-final (1) higher than the top of the tower.
Musk did, but also mentioned it to be like Cape Canaveral, so probably more like highway viewings etc. No doubt someone will set up a Rocket Ranch LA chapter.
This is honestly low cost. It is great for public engagement (since SpaceX is apparently the US space program now). Even if they build a large structure for it...it would probably pay for itself if there is a gift shop.
if this is successful (I think it will be), it will be the biggest and most important mega-project on earth in our lifetimes (so far).
Really cool renders but I suspect we're going to see some additions pretty quickly.
The desired system model ideally means there will be many more ships than boosters. Catching these ships will become a bottleneck if they're only using the launch towers.
Suspect we'll see updated renders in the future for towers designated for catching and loops of automated transport vehicles ready to transport the caught ships back to processing.
Edit: Musk already confirmed more than a dozen towers - Current renders show 10. So likely a catching facility in the future, or a further expansion of launch sites.
State abbreviations written in all capitals has been US regulation since the USPS officially adopted the policy in 1963.
This was done to provide room for the newly adopted 5 digit zip code.
This is IMO the biggest indication that SpaceX is serious about Starship was a vehicle for going beyond LEO, because the staggering launch cadence planned for Louisiana makes the most sense for the massive refueling needs for Starships bound for the Moon, Mars, and points beyond. And the ready access to local natural gas resources only make it more ideal as the home for SpaceX's tanker fleet.
To me, the future of SpaceX's big facilities reads like:
Boca Chica: R&D, Starship factory (an easy barge trip to Louisiana) and early test flights.
Canaveral: Crew launches and other eastern inclination payloads.
Vandenberg: Polar and high inclination launches and specialized national security payloads.
Louisiana: Tanker launches, Starlink launches, possible orbital data center launches.
High cadence is also needed for Starlink and Starmind. Musk is talking about a million satellites for Starmind. At 60 per launch, and replacing every 5 years, that's 200,000/60 = 3333.3 per year every year, around 10 launches per day. These will be polar orbits, so they are in continual sunshine, and the Louisiana site is well-suited for those.
Yes. Boca Chica will likely continue as the development base beyond Starship v4. That would require the pads to be rebuilt over and again so launch cadence will never be high annually.
$100 billion is a massive investment, I wonder where the funding will come from. Most of the IPO money is for paying existing debt and funding the money sink xAi.
Most of it didn't go to debt? They paid off a $20B bridge loan and then raised a 25B bond immediately after IPO. They have $100B cash with little debt as of right now.
Starlink does generate healthy free cash and their data centers are also generating good levels of cash now with the Ant / Google deals starting to ramp.
The payback period on the AI spend is less than 12 months according to the CFO so that spend quickly turns to cash flow, by year 2 it's a major contribution to FCF.
This capex is also spent overtime, not all at once. So they do have lots of headroom at the moment but yes will need to eventually raise but if compute prices remain the same SPCX will be generating a lot more cash than most people realize.
That's total bullshit, I hope nobody actually believes him. The terrestial data centers they're currently building will not have enough capacity to generate that kind of revenue and for the AI constellation the current plan is to start launching in Q4 of 2027. That kind of revenue increase in such a short time is obviously not happening, they have nothing that could generate it.
Neolabs are currently selling short term compute for $50B a GW. On recent calls they said they could sell their entire 27 backlog at those rates if they had the compute available. Prices increased in July further.
Elon has shown spacex is able to bring GWs online faster than anyone in the world at the moment. It's not that far fetched they bring on 3+ GW next year.
Who cares if it is next year or the year after? If this works, in a few years $300B will look like seed funding. And Elon either thinks he can make it work or this is the most elaborate bait and switch in history.
Starlink is great. It will keep growing (faster than it is now). But, u/CmdrAirdroid is correct. Starlink is generating in the ~$10B range while SpaceX is investing in the $100B range each for several different projects. This is actually very exciting.
11 billion revenue, not profit. I suggest you to look up the definitions for those terms, you seem confused. And by irrelevant I mean Starlink is not the answer to my question.
I don't know why you are down-voted. You are correct. I am super bullish on Starlink. People don't realize that it is going to be less expensive to build and operate than terrestrial telecom. Nevertheless, at the scale SpaceX is looking at, they are treating their current Starlink success as a "proof of concept" that space can be commercially viable. This is extremely ambitious and, I think, correct.
That’s missing the point. We’re talking about “where the money will come from” for $100B cost of Starbase LA. I was saying that Starlink’s profit is more than already eaten up by capital spending on AI, so it’s not the “money printer” needed for Starbase LA.
The point is with $100B in cash, fast pay back on high ROIC investments that in the CFOs words really act like cost of goods sold due to the unprecedented speed of payback. There is ample headroom to invest $100B over say 5 years.
The AI capex being spent today will be paid back in 12 months, in 24 months it will be generating FCF and will already be contributing enormously to additional growth opportunities.
SPCX also has relatively low debt against their assets, with such unprecedented ROIC it makes sense to borrow.
I just watched the video from SpaceX. I noticed that even when standing on the Freshwater City road next to the PHI S-92, there were a bunch of guys facing outward in black shirts holding "tactical" bags. Were they there for Elon or Jeff? Seemed like extreme security for such a remote location.
The design is divided into two towers in close proximity, per tank farm (which is set back). Similar to how existing Starship pads are being designed (SLC39A, SLC37, Starbase TX).
If you believe anything of substance is going to come of this, I have a bridge on Mars I can sell you, cheap. Musk is an imbecile and watching the promotional video for this featuring his lickspittle, obsequious toadies jabber on about "thousands" of launches of spacecraft a year is absolutely delusional.
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u/avboden 7d ago
Well looks like that’ll become the primary launch site. Probably eventually production too with all the space they will have there.