# Starbase Louisiana **Announced August 25, 2026.** [[SpaceX]] and the State of Louisiana unveiled **Starbase Louisiana**, a Starship launch and manufacturing campus on roughly **125,000 acres** of former [[ExxonMobil]] land in **Vermilion Parish**, near Abbeville on the Gulf coast about 200 miles west of New Orleans. The plan calls for **up to ten Starship launch pads**, construction beginning by the **end of 2027**, and a first launch **as soon as 2029**. Governor [[Jeff Landry]] announced it as the largest capital investment in Louisiana history. The headline number is **$100 billion**. That figure is the least binding element of the arrangement, and the reason this page exists is everything underneath it. ## Terms | Item | Detail | |---|---| | Announced | **August 25, 2026** | | Site | ~125,000 acres, former [[ExxonMobil]] land, Vermilion Parish (Abbeville) | | Buildout | Up to **10 Starship launch pads**; construction by end of **2027**; first launch as soon as **2029** | | SpaceX capital commitment | **$100B** — a stated intention, not an obligation to any counterparty | | Jobs claim | **3,000 direct jobs over 10 years**, average salary **$92,600** (LED). [[Gwynne Shotwell]] separately described a community of at least 3,000 residents and up to **10,000 permanent jobs**, 60–80% local | | Property taxes | **Replaced by a PILOT** — see below | | PILOT terms | **$20M upfront** plus **at least $25M annually for 25 years**; **>$825M** total to local taxing bodies | | Charitable condition | **$25M donation to the [[Community Foundation of Acadiana]]**, made a *condition* of the state incentives package | | Other state incentives | Sales- and use-tax rebates on aerospace machinery and materials; property-tax exemption for aerospace manufacturing, assembly and testing | | Enabling legislation | **Six bills** passed in the 2026 regular session — see below | ⚠️ **Two payment figures circulate and they are different scopes, not a correction of each other.** Reporting gives **$820M over 25 years** for Vermilion Parish specifically and **more than $825M** for all local taxing bodies including the $20M upfront payment. Do not treat one as a restatement of the other. ## The asymmetry: what binds whom The two large numbers in this deal are legally different kinds of object. - **SpaceX's $100 billion is a projection.** No contract obligates the company to spend it. If the campus is built at a tenth the scale, or not at all, nothing is breached. - **Vermilion Parish's concession is a contract.** Under the [[Payment in Lieu of Taxes]] agreement, the property comes off the tax roll for **25 years** and the parish receives a fixed, escalating payment instead. If SpaceX builds far *more* than announced, the parish's share does not rise with it — that is the function of a PILOT, and it is why the instrument is attractive to the company. The same asymmetry runs through the jobs figures. LED's 3,000-over-ten-years at $92,600 is the number attached to the incentive conditions; Shotwell's 10,000 permanent jobs is the number attached to the podium. They are not in conflict so much as they are aimed at different audiences. ## The legislation came first — and it is not mostly about money The most consequential part of this deal is not the subsidy. It is that **Louisiana rewrote six statutes for an industry with one plausible occupant, in the spring, months before SpaceX's involvement was publicly confirmed in August.** | Bill | Act | What it does | |---|---|---| | **HB 1071** | Act 101 | Exempts most state and local records associated with aerospace projects — plans, technical data, security records — from the Louisiana Public Records Law | | **HB 1179** | Act 102 | Extends property-tax exemption to aerospace manufacturing, assembly and testing facilities | | **HB 1033** | Act 188 | Adds spaceports to the state's definition of critical infrastructure; unauthorized entry becomes a felony | | **HB 1088** | Act 190 | Authorizes state and local sales-tax rebates on aerospace materials and machinery — conditioned on **≥$1B new capital investment and ≥200 direct permanent jobs** between July 1, 2026 and July 1, 2031 | | **HB 1098** | — | Bars nuisance, trespass and noise claims against aerospace operators | | **HB 1250** | Act 343 | Lets aerospace companies file a special motion pausing discovery and seeking early dismissal of suits tied to spaceport operations; originated as HB 1099, which would have voided any court injunction halting aerospace operations | A seventh bill supplied the definitions the others depend on, including **"aerospace flight entity"** — drawn broadly enough to cover any company holding an FAA launch license along with its contractors, suppliers, and even landowners leasing property for rocket operations. Three observations that the tax framing obscures: 1. **HB 1088's qualifying threshold is a specification.** A statute that requires $1 billion of new capital and 200 permanent jobs from an aerospace facility inside a five-year window is general in form and singular in application. It is written to a customer. 2. **HB 1098 removes, in advance, the exact remedy being used against SpaceX elsewhere.** Roughly **60 South Texas households** are currently pursuing nuisance, trespass and noise claims over the Boca Chica Starbase. Louisiana eliminated those causes of action against aerospace operators before the Louisiana facility existed. Combined with HB 1250's discovery stay, a resident's practical path to relief is closed at both ends — the claim is barred, and if one is filed anyway, fact-gathering pauses. 3. **HB 1071 makes the project's own record disappear from public review**, at the same moment HB 1033 turns approaching it into a felony. The state simultaneously reduced what the public can see and increased what the public risks by getting close. Taken together, the six acts do something the vault has repeatedly tracked at the federal level and rarely seen written down this plainly at the state level: **they transfer the cost of a facility's externalities from the operator to its neighbors, and remove the instruments the neighbors would use to contest it.** The subsidies are the visible half; the liability shield, the discovery stay, the records exemption and the felony trespass provision are the durable half. ## The charitable donation is consideration The state incentive package is conditioned on SpaceX making a **$25 million donation to the [[Community Foundation of Acadiana]]** to address "strategic regional priorities and needs arising from the growth associated with the project." Read that phrase literally: the money is meant to address problems the project will create. In an ordinary fiscal arrangement, growth-driven costs — schools, roads, emergency services, housing pressure — are met from the tax base the growth generates, appropriated by elected bodies through a public budget. Here the tax base has been converted to a fixed PILOT and the growth costs are funded by a negotiated gift to a private grantmaking intermediary. Nothing about that implies wrongdoing by the foundation, which is a conventional regional community foundation. The point is structural: **the money moves through a philanthropic channel rather than a fiscal one**, and the accountability that attaches to it is a foundation's, not a parish council's. Coverage that records the $25M as generosity has recorded it in the wrong column — it is a term of the deal. ## Significance - **This is the state-level version of the federal-capture pattern the SpaceX dossier already tracks**, and it is far better documented, because Louisiana Economic Development published the terms and the legislature left a bill trail. - **The sequencing is the tell.** Statutes in spring, company in August. Reporting at the time of passage described "SpaceX rumors"; the laws were enacted while the beneficiary was formally unnamed, which is what allowed them to be debated as aerospace policy rather than as one company's terms. - **The binding obligations run one direction.** A parish committed its tax base for 25 years; a legislature committed six statutes permanently; SpaceX committed to a number. - **It gives SpaceX a second Starbase with a better legal environment than the first.** Boca Chica generated litigation and FAA friction; Louisiana pre-emptively removed the litigation and shielded the records. ## Open questions - **HB 1098's final status and Act number.** As of the May 29 reporting it had reached the Senate floor with amendments adopted and required a floor vote before June 1; later coverage lists it among six signed laws. Confirm the Act number against the Louisiana Legislature record. - **The definitions bill's number.** Coverage refers to it variously; one account gives HB 1175. Confirm. - **The PILOT escalator.** "At least $25M annually, growing over time" — the escalation formula is not public in the reporting reviewed. - **Land acquisition terms.** How SpaceX obtained ~125,000 acres of former [[ExxonMobil]] property, at what price, and whether any public land or servitudes are involved. - **Whether the $100B figure carries clawbacks.** HB 1088's rebate is conditioned on $1B and 200 jobs. Nothing found conditions anything on the $100B. ## Connects to - [[Payment in Lieu of Taxes]] — the instrument at the center of the parish's side - [[Community Foundation of Acadiana]] — recipient of the conditioned $25M - [[Louisiana Economic Development]] — the agency that negotiated and published the terms - [[Jeff Landry]] — signed the six enabling acts and announced the project - [[Starbase]] — the original Boca Chica site, and the source of the nuisance litigation HB 1098 forecloses - [[Starship]] — the vehicle the campus is built for - [[SpaceX Contracts]] · [[SpaceX Calendar]] · [[SpaceX Watch Log]] (logged 2026-08-25) - [[Regulatory Capture]] · [[Rent-Seeking]] ## See Also - [[SpaceX]] — company page - [[Space Launch Infrastructure]] - [[SpaceX Events]] — index of SpaceX events and deals - [[Deals Hub]]