SpaceX has posted its first Louisiana jobs for Starbase Louisiana. A month after the $100 billion Pecan Island announcement, the sharper local story is how little the public was told while the state locked in land, tax treatment and liability rules under the codename Project Osprey.
On Aug. 25, Gov. Jeff Landry and SpaceX formally announced “Starbase Louisiana,” a $100 billion, decade-long spaceport planned for former ExxonMobil marshland at Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish. This outlet reported the underlying deal, under that same codename, 16 days earlier, in an Aug. 9 piece connecting the site to SpaceX's broader push into orbital AI data-center infrastructure, a use case the company has discussed elsewhere; the official Aug. 25 rollout itself was built around launch cadence, Starlink and jobs, not orbital computing. A month later, the project has moved from announcement to early hiring, and a second story is emerging about how much of the groundwork was done out of public view.
What's actually being built
Plans call for five launch complexes with 10 pads total, plus propellant production, power generation, vehicle processing, deep-water shipping access, an airport and employee housing, what SpaceX and the state are calling the company's fourth major launch site (SpaceX already flies from California, Florida and Texas). Elon Musk has said the build-out could eventually support more than 30 Starship flights a day, a figure that comes from Musk rather than the state's own public materials. Construction is targeted to begin in 2027, with a first launch as early as 2029; the project remains in permitting and environmental review, which is not yet complete.
The site itself runs about 125,000 acres by the state and company's own figures, though some reporting has put it higher, around 130,000 acres. Louisiana Economic Development's figures put direct hiring at about 3,000 jobs, averaging roughly $92,600, plus more than 8,000 indirect jobs. SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell has suggested the total could grow toward 10,000 based on the company's experience scaling up its Texas Starbase, and the company says it intends to hire heavily from the local area. Louisiana Illuminator's review of LED negotiation documents put the state's total incentive package at an estimated $27.5 billion, a figure from those documents rather than an audited final cost.
SpaceX has pledged wetland restoration, marsh creation, and shoreline protection in partnership with state and federal agencies, and says it will not develop the site's entire footprint.
What's new since the announcement
Hiring has started. SpaceX's first Louisiana job posting, reported Sept. 8-11, was a government affairs manager role for Pecan Island. The company has since added civil engineer and construction-project-manager listings for launch-pad design and infrastructure, tagged to Louisiana but expected to begin in Texas before relocating in 2027, an early, concrete sign the project is moving past the press-release stage.
The parcel's history is coming into focus. Reporting has tied the Pecan Island land to prior ExxonMobil holdings and a coastal legal settlement, though WECU News was not able to independently verify the full chain of title as of publication and will update if that's confirmed.
A related, separate bid is developing. Louisiana officials are preparing a pitch for a proposed U.S. Space Force and NASA “space academy” ordered by President Trump, with New Orleans and NASA's existing Michoud Assembly Facility floated as the site. It's tied to the same wave of federal and private space investment in the state but is a distinct project from the SpaceX spaceport, not part of it.
The NDA problem, and what it doesn't cover
The sharper story, and the one with the most staying power, is about what residents weren't told. NPR reported that negotiations were shielded by nondisclosure agreements and that the state granted tax and liability terms before most Pecan Island residents had a public process, and residents told local and national reporters that survey markers appeared on the land before they knew what was being planned, a detail WECU News has not independently confirmed with primary records or photos.
It's worth being precise about what has and hasn't happened on the regulatory side. Louisiana has moved SpaceX's state permits onto an expedited technical-review track, which is not the same as a completed environmental review or a wholesale waiver of it. Separately, and this is the piece most coverage has blurred, the FAA proposed a rule in late July to waive requirements under roughly 13 federal environmental statutes, including NEPA and the Endangered Species Act, for commercial launch and reentry licenses nationally. That's a proposed federal rule with a public comment period that closed around Aug. 31, not a waiver Louisiana granted for this site specifically, and it has not been finalized. Wildlife groups have warned against that proposed federal change; that criticism is fair, but it's aimed at a pending FAA rule, not a completed state action.
The tax and liability terms are also more public than the NDA framing alone suggests. Louisiana's 2026 legislative session passed aerospace-specific property-tax exemptions and Act 874, which shields aerospace companies holding 20,000 or more contiguous acres from nuisance claims over sonic booms and vibration. Those were public bills that went through the Legislature, even though SpaceX wasn't named in them and the site-specific negotiations behind them were not public. The fair distinction is between public input on the site itself, which residents say they didn't get, and public input on the statutes that made the deal possible, which went through ordinary legislative process.