Starbase Louisiana

[Yazata]

And how soon until this? Next year?

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[Yazata]

Map of the Starbase Louisiana area. (I don't think that it's exactly to scale.) The white outline is the former Exxon property that SpaceX purchased. I'm not sure, but I think that the red properties have also been purchased by SpaceX from other owners. The Rockefeller National Wildlife Refuge and the White Lake Wetlands on the left and the Audubon Society and State Wildlife Refuge on the right are expected to stay. The little unincorporated community of Pecan Island in the middle, with about 300 largely Cajun residents in various small properties strung out along a road is expected to stay.

The part of the property that SpaceX is expected to develop is marked very roughly by the blue dotted line. The blue dots mark the location where SpaceX says that it is taking core samples according to a local government filing. The launch pads will be along the southern edge towards the Gulf shore, then propellant and deluge tank farms immediately above, and natural gas purification/liquifaction facilities (there's lots of natural gas there, which originally attracted Exxon) and air separation plants (that pull LOX and liquid nitrogen out of the air) above that, closer to Pecan Island. The vertical assembly building and industrial buildings will be to the right, along the Intracoastal Waterway with ship and barge access. There will be an airport and employee housing tucked into the property somewhere, perhaps near the upper right of the dotted line area which would put them near the industrial area and away from the pads.

All in all, the developed part looks to be about 25,000 acres (a very roomy 39 square miles, larger than Manhattan or the city of San Francisco) out of the total 120,000 acre (188 square mile) Exxon property. Given that the pads will be some distance apart, much of the launch area will remain largely undeveloped, albeit very noisy.

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[Yazata]

More closeup of the area to be developed:

The green dots mark where core samples are being drilled at the 10 launch pads in five groups of two, stretched out along 7 1/2 miles of coast.

The purple dots mark where five ground support tank farms will go, one for each two paired pads.

THe red dots mark where other facilities will go. The exxon dock will remain and be developed. Freshwater bayou is currently being dredged to make the Exxon dock better able to unload ocean going ships delivering heavy steel and equipment. A Starship factory might go near the dock slong with a huge vertical assembly building even larger than the Texas and Florida Gigabays. Inevitably, it's being called the Terabay. The red dots up Louisiana highway 3147 (actually a two lane road) indicate additional industrial buildings and employee housing and stuff like that.

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[Yazata]

The guy who made the maps above heard that SpaceX wanted to build a new road to access the site, so he tried connecting the red bore sites together with a line and got this:

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It lines up with the existing road up on Pecan Island and looks very plausible. He even speculated that where it makes a 90 degree turn might be where a new launch operations center for all ten pads might eventually go, since it would have a view of all the pads off in the distance. If you connect the white dots in the same way, you get what might be two more roads, one running along the row of pads and the other along the row of ground support sites, with a connection up to that hypothesized operations center.

He writes:

"At the risk of being labeled a conspiracy theorist, the other day someone commented on my permit map that the other red soil boring locations "are for the access road SpaceX is planning on building". I went ahead and entertained this idea and connected those dots to see what that might look like.

Obviously, there are a lot of advantages to this as the old road is narrow (~25 ft wide), has some pretty tight turns, and bridges that aren't rated for much weight. It will have major upgrades regardless, but building a secondary road straight off the Hwy toward the center of the property makes a lot of sense. They can build it from scratch exactly how they want it and could add an operations building with cross sectional views of the launch area.

Keep in mind that I'm just staring at points on paper and not dirt, concrete, or steel. I have as much knowledge that Spacex is putting mission control here as I do them putting a playground. This is pure speculation until we get some permits filed. Which, by the way, no new CUP's were filed this week on the Base or in Vermilion Parish in general. We wait..."

https://x.com/thelacoast/status/2098484557523911034

One of the replies added this:

"Soil borings are the one signal that can't be walked back — nobody pays for geotech along a corridor they don't intend to build on. Permit filings leak intent months before press releases do."

And somebody asked what's with the small squares labelled "School Board"? @thelacoast replied "Old LA law setting aside the 16th section of almost every township for public schools."

[Yazata]

Louisiana has a problem that many other states would love to have:

https://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/...aprojects/

A series of major industrial projects are coming to Louisiana, touting numerous high-paying jobs that require specialized training, most notably the Hyundai steel plant in Ascension Parish, the Meta Hyperion data center in Richland Parish and a Space X launch facility in Vermilion Parish.

Their staffing demands are straining the state’s ability to train enough students to ensure the new jobs go to Louisianians, Louisiana Community and Technical College System President Richard Nelson told the Board of Regents at its monthly meeting Tuesday.

Another challenge for the system as it tries to fill those jobs is the companies hiring highly-skilled tradespeople from community colleges who are training the next generation of workers, higher education leaders said at a budget hearing Tuesday.

“We can’t produce 10 times, 100 times more welders or plumbers if everyone is poaching all of our faculty,” Commissioner of Higher Education Kim Hunter Reed said. “So that issue has to be resolved, and companies need to stand in partnership with us as we try to do this work.”

In addition to luring away faculty, Nelson said some companies are hiring students before they complete their training to meet their need for workers with even basic technical skills.

Entry-level positions at the Meta data center start at $44,200 a year, according to figures from Louisiana Economic Development. The annual pay for lowest-paid workers at the SpaceX facility will be $78,000, while Hyundai has not made entry-level compensation for its steel mill jobs public.

Nelson said the demand for workers is so high that the system would have to double its enrollment for Louisiana residents to fill the available jobs. The system enrolls more than 100,000 students annually and awards credentials and degrees to over 30,000 students a year.

[Yazata]

SpaceX just held a community meeting with Vermillion Parish residents, the first of many.

The following is a report by a local (Trisha) who says:

My Starbase Louisiana SpaceX town hall notes!

Roads: Bridge work is the first priority, with road upgrades coming soon. Once construction starts, they plan to bus contract workers in to reduce traffic.

About 40,000 acres will be developed. SpaceX says it is committed to keeping the other two-thirds accessible to the public for hunting and fishing.

More specifically, expect limited access south of Humble Canal.

Why 40,000 acres? One reason: some pads will be operational while others are still being built. That means more spacing between pads.

They do not anticipate structural damage to homes in Pecan Island, and say they will work with residents if it becomes necessary.

Target: 10,000 launches a year. Expect most activity around sunrise and sunset.

First permits should start showing up soon.

Starship will be manufactured on site.

There will not be one contractor in charge. There will be many, with SpaceX keeping the lead.
Contractors are held to a high standard and will have to keep earning their spot on this site.

Biggest takeaway: SpaceX is humble. Always wanting to learn, and not claiming to have all the answers.
They are leaning on experts in Vermilion Parish for wetland and wildlife knowledge while developing the largest spaceport in history.

From where I sat, the meeting tone felt constructive and mostly curious. People asked practical stuff (roads, vibration, marsh, jobs). SpaceX didn’t pretend they already had every answer, which helped.

[Yazata]

It's hard to predict what skills might be in demand!

SpaceX job announcement:

"In this role, you will fit noise-isolating headphones onto live white shrimp"!!

Do shrimp even have ears?? I don't believe that they do. Instead they sense vibrations in the water with sensory cells all over their bodies.

I'm guessing that this job is in response to some environmental thing, to ensure that rocket noise won't harm the local shrimp fisheries.

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[Yazata]

A Starbase Louisiana update, brought to you by a couple of little Louisiana reporters

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/2n9g5tuS95M