180 pointsby bilsbie6 hours ago32 comments
  • tristanjan hour ago
    So this is official after months of speculation. Local realtors called this back in May https://x.com/SERobinsonJr/status/2051440979878559829 , and Ars Technica covered these rumors earlier this month https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/08/spacex-is-set-to-acqui... .

    The Louisiana location has two major benefits:

    Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO) Access: Launches into SSO have a launch angle of ~98° relative to the equator (i.e. south), and launching from Louisiana gives a direct launch corridor over the Gulf of America without crossing major cities.

    SpaceX plans to launch millions of datacenter satellites in SSO, so this is the perfect launch site for their use case. SSO launches from their existing launch sites (Boca Chica and Cape Canaveral) would overfly land.

    Existing Methane pipelines: They are next to existing Gulf Coast natural gas/LNG infra, making bulk liquid methane delivery significantly easier. Currently for Starbase, there are no pipelines and methane is shipped in via truck. Delivering the ~1,000 metric tons of methane required for a single Starship launch requires 50-60 tanker truck deliveries.

    • phlakaton42 minutes ago
      I think you mean the Gulf of Mexico.

      It's poor form to let a crybaby bully have his way.

    • an hour ago
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    • leohan hour ago
      Also the benefit of marginal environmental regulations...
    • rayineran hour ago
      This is Chinese-level industrial planning. Amazing.
  • chasd005 hours ago
    Man if this actually starts to happen it's a good time to be a welder, concrete worker, or any general contractor or tradesman in Louisiana. Coastal Louisiana is some of the poorest areas in the US even more so than the valley in Texas where Starbase Texas is located. Probably 10-20 years worth of solid work building out that site.
    • utopiah3 hours ago
      Hmmm is it though? Quite a few articles like https://futurism.com/future-society/elon-musk-stiffing-contr... make me think they better ask to be paid upfront.
      • user0000542 minutes ago
        Interesting article but not too thorough. Here is more about that contractor:

        https://www.hagerty.com/media/great-reads/how-darryl-cuttell...

        • ecommerceguy15 minutes ago
          Hmmm. Aquire all these properties under the guise of reviving things for racing and oopsie it failed what ever shall we do with all these properties now? Oh yeah do what we do best – build data centers.
      • ricardobeatan hour ago
        Why would a contractor continue working for two years racking up a $136M dollar bill?
        • dgellow31 minutes ago
          Because they believe the lies from Musk?
      • s1artibartfast2 hours ago
        While workers are rarely paid up front, two week pay interval is pretty common
        • kurthran hour ago
          Contractors are commonly net30/net60/net90 or paid on completion and inspection of work done. This isn't a union job with biweekly paychecks.
        • bix62 hours ago
          did we read the same article? The link above says nothing about pay period but does list hundreds of millions unpaid.
          • fastball2 hours ago
            hundreds of millions unpaid and zero investigative journalism to try to get at the truth, besides "liens filed therefore Elon Musk is a cheapskate".
            • bix6an hour ago
              So you think multiple contractors in multiple states are just filing liens for fun?
      • thegrim332 hours ago
        It's so interesting to me that the whole "futurism" concept got co-opted into some sort of political propaganda machine. All the articles are negative hit pieces, they're all reductive, they're almost all political in nature. I used to go on the futurism subreddit years ago and it's all the same there. You'd think "futurism" would be about .. promoting new technology, ushering in the future, you know .. futurism. Not just another political propaganda outlet.
        • jubilantian hour ago
          Futurism is a focus on the future. The future may be good or bad. Your desire to focus only on the upsides (for you) and not want to hear about the consequences, externalities, or dangers is one of the most "political" positions a technologist can have.

          Do you hate reading most science fiction? Because the ratio of dystopic to utopic scifi is pretty unbalanced.

          • modeless41 minutes ago
            Yeah, I hate modern science fiction. It's almost all terrible. Sci-fi written in the time of actual ongoing world wars and the Cold War's constant threat of instant nuclear annihilation was far more optimistic, and far more imaginative.
          • ralfdan hour ago
            That is a modern phenomena though. Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian. But today even Star Trek has to be bleak/gritty/depressing.
            • bodge500031 minutes ago
              Classic sci-fi was far from universally optimistic, it had more optimistic pieces than we do today but I'd still say on the whole it was more dystopia than utopia. Even for its own time, the original Star Trek was considered uniquely optimistic, though a large part of that is that its just much easier to write a good story where the setting itself provides the necessary challenges for a story to work, rather than an optimistic setting which rules out a lot of the usual challenges. Even Star Trek struggled, a good chunk of its stories are about encountering a race or civilisation without that utopia, turns out telling a good story without any conflict is pretty tough, especially a long running one.

              But it does more generally reflect how society views technology as a whole too. People are generally a lot more pessimistic about new tech now, myself included, we've seen time and time again how its used to control or squeeze us. There actually was a Star Trek episode, "The Game" (season 5, episode 6) about an addicting device you could compare to smartphones (though the device in Star Trek doesn't spy on you to sell your every move to advertisers, missed a trick there), and that certainly wasn't supposed to be an optimistic look at technology, so you can see why things have gone the way they have.

            • sharkjacobs32 minutes ago
              > Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian

              Yeah for sure, science fiction used to be optimistic and utopian, like Planet of the Apes, Brave New World, Frankenstein, 1984, Earth Abides, The Martian Chronicles, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and Island of Dr Moreau, We, Farenheit 451 ...

              • bodge500023 minutes ago
                Great to see Island of Dr Moreau mentioned, people often forget about that but its one of my favourite books
              • dgellow28 minutes ago
                Forgot about We, I love that book
            • dgellow29 minutes ago
              You mean like Dune, the Neuromancer, Bladerunner, the Time Machine?
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          • kulahanan hour ago
            You could just say “no” - it would save a lot of space, be about as polite, and way less annoying.

            Sometimes people want to talk about science stuff without talking about human fallout and political implications. It’s perfectly fine to want an occasional break from those types of discussions.

            • ryandrake12 minutes ago
              Talking about "science stuff" without even mentioning the political and human implications is pointlessly incomplete. It's like trying to talk about a programming language without mentioning variables.

              Everything is human and everything is political. To pretend that it is not is, in itself, a political stance.

        • root_axisan hour ago
          Any particular issue you have with the content of the article?
        • apian hour ago
          That’s just a microcosm of everything. The culture war ate the entire public discourse to the exclusion of practical concerns and even coherent ideas. It’s all vibes and tribalism and bashing the other tribes, while the tribes themselves become increasingly incoherent in terms of what (if anything) they really mean or stand for.

          I just turned it all off, though it makes me fear for the future. Feels like the early stages of societal collapse.

        • Arodexan hour ago
          >they're all reductive

          What is reductive in the richest man on Earth not paying his dues on time? What nuance, what depth do you think is needed here?

      • root-parentan hour ago
        Its well known X did not pay their huge AWS bill. I would ask for cash first...
    • swingandamiss5 hours ago
      A lot of good, hard working people in that area that would love to have these jobs open up.
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      • pinkmuffinere4 hours ago
        somewhat topical video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3dSjY4j7Ak

        tl;dw -- louisiana has a ton of natural resources and wonderful harbors, but has allowed corporations to get away with almost anything without paying their fair share of taxes, cleaning up their waste, or generally being held accountable. And likely related, there is a long history of rampant corruption in the area. With sea levels rising and cancerous pollution filling densely populated areas, life in Louisiana has generally become very difficult :(

        • jpleyden983 hours ago
          I haven't had time to watch the video but my understanding was a lot of the Louisiana coast have big problems with rising sea levels and much of it in the process of falling underwater. Perhaps it's relatively trivial to reinforce the coast for the forseeable I don't know.

          The plans for the site involve extracting significant amounts of natural gas to make methane to burn for the rocket fuel. If they hit the launch levels they suggest (thousands of launches per year), this is not a small amount of greenhouse gases they'll be emitting which of course helps accelerate melting of the ice caps and rising sea levels, which could threaten the very site they've built it on.

          • timschmidt2 hours ago
            They're also the folks working on the largest co2 -> methane converters in the world. Because that's how they'll need to make fuel on Mars, and no one else on earth wants to fund an expensive technology to replace an inexpensive gas pumped from the ground. By definition, these reactors will have to be capable of producing enough fuel for a rocket in order to be fit for purpose. That opens the door for carbon neutral operation. It's tough to imagine a greener rocket than a fully reusable one that's carbon neutral running on methane. Sure beats spewing hypergolics or solid rocket fuels.
        • tantalor3 hours ago
          Reminds me of Africa in terms of resource exploitation and lack of re-investment.
        • gammarator3 hours ago
          The book “Strangers in Their Own Land” covers similar ground.
        • pstuart3 hours ago
          > but has allowed corporations to get away with almost anything without paying their fair share of taxes

          No doubt one of the more compelling reasons for SpaceX to do it there (along with their given reasoning).

      • ActorNightly4 hours ago
        [flagged]
      • gchamonlive3 hours ago
        What are the chances they'll employ cheap labor they can just use as election fodder for stealing hard-working american jobs?

        Either that or pay decent wages for American workers that'll drive up construction prices and worsen the inflation which is already crazy due to these criminal tariffs.

        • jtbaylyan hour ago
          So no matter what they do, you blame them? If they pay not enough, they are bad, if they pay enough, they are also bad. Ok.
          • gchamonlivean hour ago
            They put themselves in that situation, the US admin, not me. I'm just commenting. Or is any of what I said wrong? I mean there's something called ITAR that requires American workers, but that doesn't mean the impact on inflation isn't real
        • WalterBright35 minutes ago
          Inflation is caused by deficit money creation. It is not caused by taxes, tariffs, corporate greed, union greed, oligarchs, or anything else.
          • gchamonlive29 minutes ago
            That's a very narrow view of inflation. If you increase wages, there's more demand for goods, more demand means higher prices which means higher inflation. Same with tariffs, they are paid when importing goods, which is passed onto the consumer, resulting in higher prices and thus inflation.
            • consensus120 minutes ago
              And where did that money to increase wages come from?
          • dgellow27 minutes ago
            That’s a very, very narrow definition of inflation
        • timschmidt2 hours ago
          ITAR requires them to employ US citizens.
          • rayineran hour ago
            ITAR proves it’s possible to have immigration enforcement.
    • sigmoid104 hours ago
      If the figures in this announcement hold up, they're gonna spend like $20k per resident of LA. That's insane.
      • ryandvm4 hours ago
        Lol. I can't imaging the figures from a Musk venture not holding up.
    • notesinthefield2 hours ago
      I live around a lot of those people in SW Ohio who find themselves traveling to states like Louisiana for welding, electrical and general contracting work because the expertise isnt there. I have to imagine much of the same will happen and if anything they might reap rewards following construction. Regardless I would assume little to no relevant expertise exists there at the moment.
    • whyage4 hours ago
      Are "3,000 new jobs" enough to make a dent though?
      • chasd004 hours ago
        it doesn't fix everything wrong in the state but it's > 0. There's a lot of additional economic activity that comes with the construction too. Restaurants get busier, Walmart gets busier, lots of auto repair/servicing will be needed etc. Som e people will move for construction and end up staying there. It can be a shock to the local communities though but i think the positives still outweigh the negatives.
        • rtkwe4 hours ago
          The biggest issue is these kinds of construction jobs are temporary. It's similar to but not quite as bad as datacenters where you get a very short term influx of skilled highly paid labor but those jobs don't stick around after the construction is over. Starbase will require more people on site at least.
          • oceanplexian2 hours ago
            The construction is temporary but what are the economic impacts of having a fully operational spaceport that launches 20,000% more tonnage to orbit than the Florida Space Coast?

            Probably a great deal of long term economic impact.

            • 4 minutes ago
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            • Noaidi28 minutes ago
              You mean the negative economic impacts?
          • chasd003 hours ago
            yeah but that site is huge, that's a multi-decade construction project.
          • consensus115 minutes ago
            The whole "temporary jobs" line is completely irrelevant nonsense. Sure, it's correct, but who cares? The alternative is zero. It's not like there is only a limited amount of undeveloped land and a bunch of people bidding for it. And of course those jobs don't stick around after construction is over. They're construction workers. They move on to the the next construction job.
      • dopa423653 hours ago
        Sounds like "legal language" threshold for whatever reason? The Terafab announcement used the same phrase:

        >The initial phase of Terafab is estimated to require approximately $16.8 billion in capital investments from SpaceX and Tesla, with potential future expansion phases bringing total investment much higher. This facility will employ at least 3,000 people, many of whom will be from Grimes and nearby Brazos County — continuing the trend of our other Texas sites where between 60% and 80% of new hires are local residents.

        https://www.spacex.com/updates#terafab

        That Starbase concept (not that the numbers are realistic by any means) is orders of magnitude more ambitious than what SpaceX does today with 22k employees.

        • jrrv2 hours ago
          > many of whom will be from Grimes

          That required a double take

    • mrtksn3 hours ago
      Unless of course Musk decides to use the opportunity to advertise Optimus, be it with actually AI able to do it or teleoperator do it.
      • WalterBright33 minutes ago
        I'm skeptical that Optimus can be productive at anything other than picking up boxes, moving them around, then stacking them.
        • dgellow25 minutes ago
          Won’t stop him from advertising them
      • VanTheBrand3 hours ago
        Optimus would have to work well enough in the near future for that not gonna happen
      • nodesocketan hour ago
        Optimus ins’t gonna be a master welder, electrician, HVAC technician, general contractor anytime soon.
    • chews3 hours ago
      Is it a good time though? - Their Texas suppliers have been chasing payment and Greg Abbott rolled over and let Elon get their property without payment. Not the only Tesla/SpaceX vendor not being paid either. https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/cars/tesla/tesla-cybertruc...
      • vessenes2 hours ago
        That…is the opposite of the facts reported in that story you linked.
    • aksss3 hours ago
      Incremental domestic capital investment, good.

      The level of cynicism, shit-talking, and schadenfreude wish-casting in response to this is crazy. Start cheering on successes. Resist the deconstructionist mindset.

      • officeplant3 hours ago
        >Start cheering on successes.

        Sure, when success stops being the environmental destruction of every area he sets up shop in for SpaceX launches.

        • rayineran hour ago
          Yeah that’s just a fig leaf. I bet you can’t even name all the other places that have launch sites.
        • inglor_cz2 hours ago
          Is it realistic to demand a spaceport with no environmental impact from anyone, SpaceX or not?

          Current launch technology inevitably produces a lot of heat and noise and we don't have any rocket model that wouldn't at least rarely fail (and explode).

          That said, extant Cape Canaveral does not seem to be lifeless. Lots of birds. IDK how the precise species composition has changed since 1960, but nature as a whole is a lot more resilient than people seem to think.

      • Zigurd2 hours ago
        Go Solar City! Wait...
      • thegrim33an hour ago
        The doomerism has two primary sources:

        1) Political - The ideology/party spreading the doomerism promotes that they're the ones that can "fix it", if only you vote for them.

        2) Adversarial countries, primarily China - Using the internet to convince members of western civilization to hate their civilization, hate their economic system, hate their history, hate their compatriots, adopt a no motivation defeatist attitude, etc., etc., and they can get our population to destroy itself from within without having to go to war with us.

        Reject the doomerism, reject the negativity. Build. Invent. Create. Do your part to contribute to your civilization, to contribute to humanity, to move us forwards.

        • rayineran hour ago
          The people who build rockets and computers and the Internet are the good guys of history. We should do more of that. That statement shouldn’t have a political valence—people who subscribe to that idea can argue whether taxes should be higher or lower. But if you reject that concept you’re rejecting civilization itself.
          • consensus113 minutes ago
            It has a political valence when one party is campaigning on punishing and stopping them from building. "Should" is a meaningless word unless I have agency to change that, and I don't.
          • Noaidi16 minutes ago
            > The people who build rockets and computers and the Internet are the good guys of history

            Does no one read history anymore?

            IBM and the Holocaust

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

            The V-2 rocket

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket

            "The V-2 rocket (German: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit. 'Vengeance Weapon 2'), with the development name Aggregat-4 (A4), was the world's first practical, modern ballistic missile and suborbital launch vehicle.[4] The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany as a "vengeance weapon" and assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings of German cities."

            Nazi's are the good guys only when they work for the U.S.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

        • an hour ago
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        • mthomsan hour ago
          3) Elon Musk has fascist leanings and many people don't want to live in a world where such a person has ever increasing wealth, influence and power. Especially since he has no qualms about using that same wealth and influence to subvert and distort elections, both domestic and foreign.
          • WalterBright31 minutes ago
            > Elon Musk has fascist leanings

            Fascists aren't known for cutting government spending.

            • Noaidi15 minutes ago
              Neither is Elon Musk...
              • WalterBright7 minutes ago
                Musk has been simultaneously accused of cutting spending and failing to cut spending.
      • Noaidi19 minutes ago
        Elon Musk is mostly a bad person. I do not want mostly bad people to succeed. Why is that hard to understand? You either do no think he is a bad person, or ignore the fact he is.
  • ianm2184 hours ago
    It’s easy to be pessimistic about Musk timelines/ big tech but I am thrilled that ambitious, real world, hard projects are happening in the US again.
    • adamtaylor_134 hours ago
      You're being down-voted (and so shall I) but I think you're right. Despite all the animosity towards him, Musk is doing things that are economically meaningful for our nation.

      We'll need a few more of "him" to dig us out of this situation I reckon, but overall I still hope it's possible.

      (Anyone asking antagonistic questions can go ahead and save their fingers, I won't respond to the petty comments.)

      • sockaddr4 hours ago
        Elon-types won't "dig us out" of our mess.

        Removing parasitic elements in government spending and policy will. This starts with politics. We first need a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population. All else follows. These are all things Elon actively works against. You aren't part of his future.

        • bko2 hours ago
          I don't know, government waste and most policy sucks. But there's no reason we can't do stuff or even try.

          For instance, take Tesla. It wasn't anything revolutionary. Any auto manufacturer could have invested in battery technology and building a compelling EV, but they didn't. Same with manufacturing in America. Every manufacturer took as given that they have to outsource manufacturing to oversees and components to third parties. But it didn't have to be that way. It takes someone naive and optimistic enough to try something different.

          • boplicity2 hours ago
            It's easy to forget that Tesla was made possible almost exclusively through government incentives. This is something that most people seem to have forgotten: Tesla exists because the government created incentive programs that paid in cold hard cash. Musk took advantage of those programs, and Tesla absolutely would not have been nearly as successful (and likely not existed) without it.
            • bkoan hour ago
              This is incredibly overstated. There are "incentives" for all sorts of activities. These incentives were available to all manufacturers. We should have "incentives" to produce electric vehicles and manufacturing in America. Insane not to. And these incentives are often "you would normally have to pay us X million in taxes, but we'll let you pay less". When the alternative is something not being built and no tax revenue, it makes sense. And a lot of subsidies were to buyers of EVs
            • Game_Enderan hour ago
              The government should find ways to strategically invest in developing major industries. The market for them is global and China has/will have a bigger internal market than the US, so without intentional development we'll get a continued industrial consolidation that is bad for the US and the world. I have robotic lawn mowers and vacuum cleaners made by Chinese companies partly because an intentional policy from China's government to grow these capabilities locally.
              • dgellow21 minutes ago
                The current administration is literally cutting all those strategic investments
            • fastballan hour ago
              As much incentive as the oil & gas industry receives?
            • YetAnotherNick39 minutes ago
              What was the incentive and was that specific to Tesla?
          • dgellow22 minutes ago
            > It takes someone naive and optimistic enough to try something different.

            You mean Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, right?

          • bigyabai2 hours ago
            > Any auto manufacturer could have invested in battery technology and building a compelling EV, but they didn't

            ...because Tesla sold luxury vehicles at relatively low volume. By the time Elon reneged his "$25,000 EV" promise, China was ready to export vehicles that actually hit that price point. The only thing preventing Americans from driving affordable EVs is Elon's federal protectionism. Is that really progress?

            • decimalenoughan hour ago
              The Model Y has shifted over a million units every year since 2023 and sits at the top of many "world's best selling car" rankings.

              Obviously it's not a cheap car, but it's still mass market, not luxury.

              • bigyabaian hour ago
                It's only mass-market in the US because of subsidies and tariffs. Chinese EVs change the equation entirely.

                Outside the US protectionist bubble, Tesla is seen as a luxury brand and their inability to deliver a $25,000 EV doesn't help.

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        • WalterBright29 minutes ago
          > We first need a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population. All else follows.

          The requirement is economic freedom, from which everything follows.

        • ryandvm4 hours ago
          We just need more leeches.
          • throwaway8943452 hours ago
            Yep, it's crazy that people can correctly recognize that corruption is responsible for the current situation but fail to recognize that adding more corruption will not deliver us from it.
        • watwut3 hours ago
          They will try to dig us out of the hole they created by their previoua digging.
        • guywithahat3 hours ago
          [flagged]
          • teachrdan2 hours ago
            > He was involved in DOGE, which did nothing but catch fraud and cut worthless spending.

            Elon wasn't just involved with DOGE, he was responsible for it. And Elon said he would cut $2 TRILLION in federal spending before ultimately claiming just $110 billion in savings -- which the GAO found he lied about. Considering out budget deficit is about $2 trillion, even his inflated claims are a rounding error.

            (To say nothing of the fact that a lot of it was NOT useless spending. For example, Elon ended a program to fund countries in Central America to stop the spread of screw worms. Now screw worms are projected to cost $1.8 billion in damage to Texas alone.)

            > while Elon encourages reporting on X

            Elon has a track record of banning journalists on Twitter / X, the everything app, when they criticize him. Literally the opposite of encouraging reporting on X.

            > We need more "Elons", people like him are actually helping dig us out of this mess.

            I would encourage you to start reading independent news sources and forming your own opinions, rather than uncritically believing everything people in power feed to you. Otherwise you end up saying things online that are trivially disprovable.

            https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/09/gao-repor...

            https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/flesh-eating-scr...

            https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2024/01/09/elon-mus...

          • platevoltage2 hours ago
            Conservative media even barely talks about DOGE because of how bad the optics are, and how much of an utter failure it was.
          • krapp2 hours ago
            >Isn't that an Elon thing? He was involved in DOGE, which did nothing but catch fraud and cut worthless spending.

            It did nothing of the sort.

            Finding someone still pushing this line in 2026 is like seeing a thylacine in the wild. One can only stare in awe.

      • nyc_data_geek13 hours ago
        We need to tax all of "him" out of geopolitical relevance to fund a new New Deal, like we did after the first Gilded Age.
      • Noaidi10 minutes ago
        There is a reason Musk is so rich. He got most of his funding from taxpayers:

        https://www.moneytalksnews.com/slideshows/billion-and-counti...

        It is not him, SpaceX is a government funded project yet he keeps all the money. You should be outraged.

      • rurp2 hours ago
        Few Americans have done more than musk to destroy state capacity and to enable corruption on a massive scale, all while enriching himself to an unprecedented degree. That's great for him and his cronies that he has gotten so wealthy doing it, but he's been a huge net-negative to most humans.

        I get that rockets are cool and a lot of people in the tech bubble think that starlink is the greatest thing ever, but most people don't care about that nearly as much as they care about seeing their children die from preventable diseases he cut the funding for or getting violently ill because he drove thousands of food inspectors and researchers out of a job.

        Handling the enormous federal debt that he continues to play a part in worsening is going to very painful in the long run.

        • ryandrake3 minutes ago
          Exactly. I actually laughed out loud at OP's comment. Elon Musk has never done anything to benefit the broader "us." The idea that "we" need people like Musk to "dig us out of this situation" --a situation that rich men like Musk put us into in the first place-- is absolutely ridiculous.

          Billionaires don't "dig" anything except the foundations for things that are going to make them even more money.

        • throwaway8943452 hours ago
          Lol why is this downvoted? There is no dispute that he spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Trump and seat himself in government while his companies are financially dependent on government programs and contracts. This is an obvious conflict of interest, and also completely on par with all of the other corruption we're seeing from this administration.
      • throwaway8943452 hours ago
        > economically meaningful for our nation

        3,000 short term jobs doesn't put a dent in the thousands of jobs he has cut, not to mention the losses to our economy due to the tariffs, immigration policy, and deficit spending that he caused.

        > We'll need a few more of "him" to dig us out of this situation I reckon

        I'm of the impression that you can't corrupt your way out of corruption.

      • btmiller2 hours ago
        Discounting challenges to your beliefs by burying your head in the sand is certainly a choice.
      • miltonlost2 hours ago
        A few more Nazi saluting eugenicists will help us out! Truly we are at the Weimar levels.
      • watutalkinbout3 hours ago
        Musk is a marketing genius.
        • guywithahat3 hours ago
          I don't think he's known for his marketing, he's known for his engineering
          • fatal942 hours ago
            This sums up my and many others timeline of his understanding of engineering diciplines: https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/109572674700288958
            • ralfd29 minutes ago
              That link is from 2022 presumably about the twitter purchase. People like the guy in the link thought Twitter would go offline hard after firing almost all of the company, instead Elon was right and there was so much fat to cut.
            • hparadiz2 hours ago
              Posts like this is why HN is made fun of now in circles where real engineering happens. In reality you would not be able to follow what he's talking about because it would be well over your head.
              • elar_verolean hour ago
                Just watching him play POE should show you he's not the genius you think he is
                • hparadizan hour ago
                  Just proving my point here. Trying to win an argument because vidya.
              • jcranmeran hour ago
                In reality, you would not be able to follow what he's talking about because he's making stuff up and hoping your inability to understand him comes across as genius rather than bullshit.
                • WalterBright24 minutes ago
                  I bet that Russian rocket engineer who spit on Musk is regretting it now.
                • hparadizan hour ago
                  That's nice. Where's your rocket company?
                  • BenzeneDreaman hour ago
                    What an odd comment. You think because he is the CEO of a rocket company that naturally he is beyond making stuff up and talking BS? Have you ever watched an interview of his?

                    And why are CEOs as smart as engineers now.

                    This isn't Twitter. You don't have to suck up to him. He won't ever see this.

                  • jcranmeran hour ago
                    Sorry, I'm too busy trying to check an algorithm to convert floating-point numbers to strings for correctness to deal with people playing the "I'm a rocket scientist, therefore everything is easy to me" card. And yet somehow Elon isn't that (see his most recent SpaceX, where he quite literally uses that to justify his competence to build orbital data centers).
                    • WalterBright17 minutes ago
                      I implemented float-to-string for my compiler's printf back sometime before 1985. It's a medium difficult problem.

                      Once you understand engineering, transferring that skill to another engineering discipline is not that hard.

                      For example, the equations for Newtonian mechanics, electronics, beam design, rotating inertia, etc., are interchangeable.

                      > his competence to build orbital data centers

                      Since nobody has yet built an orbital data center, nobody is competent at it yet.

                    • hparadizan hour ago
                      Classic HN software eng. "I know everything about everything because I can cast a float to a string"
                      • jcranmeran hour ago
                        Thank you for putting words into my mouth that I didn't say. Especially when they're quite literally the opposite of my message.

                        Although, given that I pointed out that Elon literally did the exact same thing, why do you trust him when he does it? Or is it simply that you're unaware that he does stuff like that?

                        • WalterBright16 minutes ago
                          > why do you trust him when he does it?

                          His companies have made many monumental engineering achievements at his direction.

          • scubbo23 minutes ago
            He is (inaccurately) known for his engineering _because of_ his marketing.
          • krsw2 hours ago
            He doesn't build anything. Everything he's done has been acquisitions that he tries to astroturf as founding.
          • watutalkinbout2 hours ago
            As I said, he's a marketing genius.

            Or maybe "was" is more accurate.

          • nrmitchi2 hours ago
            *financial engineering
          • potatototoo992 hours ago
            See? Great marketing, he is not an engineer.
      • UltraSane4 hours ago
        Musk has done a huge amount to put us INTO this situation.
        • ericmay3 hours ago
          Which situation did Elon Musk put us in to? Can you elaborate? When did this situation start? What happened? What did he personally do that put us in the situation?
          • mbgerring3 hours ago
            He personally ran the department that eviscerated funding for basic scientific research in the United States
            • thegrim33an hour ago
              You could have just posted the numbers to easily make/prove your point, but you didn't, and everyone knows why you didn't. Because the numbers don't align with what you're saying. But if enough people like you say it's true, I guess that makes it true, data be damned.
          • chinathrow3 hours ago
            Funding DJT while he was running for office?
            • WalterBright12 minutes ago
              Kamala outspent him 3:1. Hillary outspent him 2:1.
            • yieldcrv3 hours ago
              fun fact, voters cause election consensus, not spending

              not spending ensures no voters know who you are, but the most spending doesn't result in the most votes

              funny prisoner's dilemma for partisans, well, more amusing if you sell ad space

              • nrmitchi2 hours ago
                > voters cause election consensus, not spending

                This is potentially one of the most out of touch comments I've seen here in a while, and that's saying something.

                • yieldcrv12 minutes ago
                  that view doesn’t make it false
            • ericmay3 hours ago
              I'm not sure what situation we're in (can someone describe it please?), but did that situation only start the day Trump took office again after being elected by the American people?
              • sailfast3 hours ago
                Yes.

                Predictability is extremely important for markets and planning and general welfare. He doesn’t have to randomly declare things on a Thursday that haven’t changed for decades and create anxiety among (you name it community or industry) just to stay in the headlines.

                Donald Trump has destroyed predictability, as well as any semblance of functioning, predictable government. Trump is an extremely influential and powerful unilateral executive - in all the wrong ways.

                Evidence you say? I guess tariff policy and a completely arbitrary war with Iran that roiled markets, just to name a couple from this year.

              • watwut3 hours ago
                And Musks money and twitter takeover did a lot of work to convince Americans vote for Trump. Then Musk joined the administration and continued digging the hole
                • ericmay3 hours ago
                  Ok.

                  The OP wrote:

                  > You're being down-voted (and so shall I) but I think you're right. Despite all the animosity towards him, Musk is doing things that are economically meaningful for our nation.

                  In the context of the US building big things, ramping up manufacturing, doing Space exploration, &c. and the person I replied to wrote:

                  > Musk has done a huge amount to put us INTO this situation

                  What situation did he put us in to in this context? Did he put us in to the situation where we are building bigger things now? Are you saying that there was a situation that we were put in to and that situation only started when Trump was elected and prior to that we were... what? Building big things and trying to restore manufacturing and now we're also doing that under Trump?

                  Someone here should be specific about what they're talking about instead of just "Musk bad Trump bad". Yea they're both morons or whatever but what exactly are we supposedly criticizing here? Just that Trump got elected? Ok that's a boring conversation let's switch back to talking about manufacturing and building big projects in America.

                  • kijashdkujdfhas2 hours ago
                    It'd be nice if his companies paid the tax they owe.

                    https://itep.org/elon-musk-spacex-tax-breaks-doge/

                  • njovin2 hours ago
                    I'll bite. Things we had in December 2024 that we no longer have today, all of which contribute to the success or failure of major initiatives:

                    - 2.9% inflation - Billions of dollars of grants for state-run energy projects - NATCAST - Healthy & stable funding for the sciences - Competent leaders at the federal and military levels to oversee large complex projects - Healthy partnerships with allies

                    Specific actions that have been taken by Trump (backed by Musk) that caused us to lose the above:

                    - Starting an unnecessary war with Iran - Cancelling grants for energy projects specifically in blue states - Imposing nonsensical tariffs on trade partners - Starting a full-blown trade war with Canada - Alienating other allies, ex. starting a middle-east conflict without any alliances (excl. Israel) - Specifically closing NATCAST because "illegal" - Gutting of science funding by DOGE & others - Removal of competent leaders & prioritization of loyalty over competence when choosing staff

                    I have a hard time taking anyone seriously when they bring up anything about Trump having a positive impact on manufacturing in America. For 4+ years he's been lying to the American public about how tariffs work and claiming that US consumers paying more taxes to the US gov't in the form of tariffs is going to 'return' manufacturing to the US. We have almost half a million unfilled manufacturing jobs in the US - explain to me again why this is a capacity problem?

                    • WalterBright10 minutes ago
                      Musk somehow initiated the war with Iran?
                    • ericmay2 hours ago
                      There's nothing to really bite on here - the OP said Elon Musk put us "in this situation" - I'm still looking for a definition or answer on what exactly this situation is. Is it a situation in which Trump is simply president? OK but Trump himself nor Musk are responsible for the previous decades of manufacturing capability destruction in the US, as an example.

                      If it's just complaining about Trump/Musk then yea sure let's complain about them in a different topic, but the OP was talking about Musk building big things and he undeniably has (or his companies have, rather).

              • chinathrow3 hours ago
                What are you talking about?
                • ericmay3 hours ago
                  Please read the thread for context.
          • SmirkingRevenge3 hours ago
            One such example - he's using his massive wealth and influence to support fascist political movements that promise mass deportation and "remigration", and even supporting these policies explicitly himself.

            In the US, his political beneficiaries have managed to "achieve" net negative migration to the US for the first time in 50 years, and the first decline in overall population in US history.

            If this becomes the new trend (and if Musk gets his political desires fulfilled, it might), the hole is getting much, much deeper while our capacity to climb out is being severely impaired.

            And oh yea, he killed hundreds of thousands of kids, mostly under 5.

      • Gud3 hours ago
        He was, until he took a chainsaw to things he didn’t understand.

        I was a huge believer in Elon musk. I invested and made a lot of money in Tesla before Model S had even entered serial production. Now? Fuck you Elon, go Peter Beck…

      • zoomaboom4 hours ago
        Golden Dome might be "economically meaningful" but it will also lead to WWIII so, no thank you.
        • ericmay3 hours ago
          No it won't. Separately other countries don't get to dictate our internal policies or whether we decide to build any sort of missile defense system. If we're going to be nuked over it, then oh well they'll get nuked too. Never can we live as hostages to wanna-be dictators and tyrants (Xi Jingping, Vladimir Putin, IRGC, &c.) and if they want to blow the whole world up then so be it but acquiescing to their bullying is simply not an option. If you think it's an option, then we should issue our own nuclear threats and take them hostage instead.
          • potatototoo992 hours ago
            Is your cognitive dissonance that strong that you don't see that if all major countries follow that line of thought all have to have their own golden domes and invite WW3?
            • AnimalMuppetan hour ago
              How does everyone having golden dome invite WWIII? We can't shoot missiles at them, so therefore let's go start a war with them? What sense does that make?

              And if we do, how are we going to fight them? By shooting missiles at them?

    • tcmart143 hours ago
      But its also hard not to be. I'm not a fan of Musk and it doesn't even have to do with Musk himself as its a common theme I see among a lot of the big tech companies or really any company doing a big project in my neck of the woods. An hour north east of me, there has been big on going data center projects for 10+ years. Sounds good right? I got a lot of family and friends in the trades. But I can almost set my watch to it. When work ramps up, its always good pay and 15 years of guaranteed work until suddenly its not. 8 months go by, suddenly everything is paused and all those contractors are out of work for a year and a half until things start up again. Then its rinse and repeat.
      • thegrim33an hour ago
        "I almost sold a car today, but if I did, sure it would have been some income, but who knows when the next time I would sell another car would be? Why bother? It's rinse and repeat"
    • jrflowers4 hours ago
      I love that people see a website about one of musk’s ideas and go “wow this is real and happening” in the year of our lord 2026
      • xboxnolifes4 hours ago
        Of all of Musk's ventures, SpaceX seems to actually do things and not just say they do things.
      • testing223212 hours ago
        These comments are so strange, because you’re demonstrating how far your head is in the sand, willfully.

        Of course Musk talks big. He is almost always late. Lots of things have never happened, or have not yet worked (but they’re still trying)

        At the same time he has monumental successes that nobody, ever, has achieved. Worlds safest car (multiple times) worlds highest selling car (model y), car of the year, massive factories building at a speed and quality that made Toyotas CEO say they’re in trouble and have a lot to improve.

        The whole supercharger network that smashes every other one.

        World’s first reusable rocket, done it 300 times now. Only two others have done it once. By far, by far more launches than every country and company in the world put together. Starship coming along.

        To say that he never does anything is a very, very strange set of blinders to view the world through

        • jjulius2 hours ago
          >At the same time he has monumental successes that nobody, ever, has achieved.

          "Nobody ever" doesn't really feel accurate here.

          >Worlds safest car (multiple times)...

          According to which body? Tesla's interpretation of NHTSA data? Some other organization? Did other cars prior to Tesla's inception obtain this title "multiple times"?

          >... worlds highest selling car (model y)...

          In 2023, the Y peaked at ~1.22 million. In 1923, the Model T sold ~2.09 million.

          >... car of the year...

          Numerous bodies label things "car of the year", and many cars were named that before and after Teslas were produced.

        • webdood9041 minutes ago
          > you’re demonstrating how far your head is in the sand

          Interesting. Perhaps ironic?

          If only society cared about genuinely good people like they seem to care about Musk. It's puzzling.

    • mrcwinn3 hours ago
      Heck. Yeah. I'm with you. This is GOOD.

      Social media is unhealthy. You know what else is unhealthy? Hacker News' constant bashing of every. single. thing. ever.

  • cwal375 hours ago
    I wonder if anyone read the copy on this page or if it mostly came out of an LLM.

    The "Restoring the shoreline" and Rebuilding the marshlands" paragraphs below the images are almost exactly the same. The first sentence is exactly the same.

    • beerandt5 hours ago
      Maybe, but there's some very specific legal language that cpra and the state requires everyone use in referring to some of these issues, and at least part of the land SpaceX is acquiring is involved in coastal restoration lawsuits or deep water horizon settlements or both.

      As an engineer working on cpra projects in the past, I've wanted to reword a variety things but was forced to use their legal language.

      It's mostly a good thing as it keeps things properly defined in a political context that are meant to have specific technical meanings (like marsh, beach, rebuild vs restore).

      • cwal374 hours ago
        I did briefly consider something along those lines, but shoreline and marshlands are materially different, plus they've already changed the text.
    • schiffern5 hours ago
      For me that makes it more likely to be human-generated. Seems like a "rushing person juggling revs and copy-pasting" mistake.

      FWIW, the writing style and tone match pre-LLM SpaceX writing. Of course you can prompt an LLM to mimic style, but somehow the regression-to-average blandness shines through. That can be hard to distinguish from bog standard corporate speak though.

    • bobchadwick4 hours ago
      Maybe the site developer saw your comment. They're different now.
  • rbanffy31 minutes ago
    Look! Flame trenches, the kind Elon said were useless because he had a better idea - that inverted shower floor.
  • mrtnmcc4 hours ago
    A way to get back at Texas for datacenter restrictions?

    Ten pads and thousands of flights per year sure will accelerate Golden Dome, err... I mean "going to Mars"

    • randallsquared4 hours ago
      Terrestrial datacenter legal restrictions are how SpaceX expects to make a lot of its money in the next 10+ years, so I would be less surprised to find them lobbying for restrictions than against, presuming they spend at all on it.
      • bpodgursky2 hours ago
        It's not a zero sum market, supply is nowhere near meeting demand, in the short term restrictions also hurt SpaceX because they are building out their own terrestrial datacenters in Memphis etc.
    • zoomaboom4 hours ago
      • 3 hours ago
        undefined
  • fig78130 minutes ago
    I definitely read this as Starbucks. Boy was I surprised when I clicked on the link
  • dylan6043 hours ago
    From the hype video, it looks like they will be building towers in pairs. Hard to tell the distances, but if one explodes on the pad, will it's pair be in the blast radius? I'm guessing the plane will be to have a launch on one them and then move to the other for a faster launch cadence?
  • pinkmuffinere3 hours ago
    I wonder how coastal they intend to be. They make a lot of claims about repairing the wetlands and coastal regions, but a lot of it is likely going to be underwater in the next 25 years because of rising sea levels [0], regardless of how many wetlands are repaired. And I suspect infrastructure like this probably has to be usable for something like 100 years to payoff. Maybe they're actually going to build inland, where the eventual coast will be?

    [0] https://www.klfy.com/louisiana/interactive-map-shows-which-p...

    • johnisom20013 minutes ago
      There are levees and other tech that has existed for centuries and millenia to stave off flooding.
    • kulahanan hour ago
      This was my question as well. If they’re as close to the shore as the picture makes it seem, they’ll be underwater with the first Cat 1 they come across, and huge cat 5s are becoming more and more common as time goes on. I wouldn’t want to invest here because how will you keep those 200 foot tall structures standing in 150 mph wind??
    • YetAnotherNick31 minutes ago
      > infrastructure like this probably has to be usable for something like 100 years to payoff

      I don't think so. Likely the pad with last 10 years max.

      In any case, I highly doubt that but in any case sea level is almost certainly going to rise below a meter. Filling a meter higher with sand is a pocket change for this project.

  • BugsJustFindMe5 hours ago
    > Building a new space coast

    But are they building it ghost to ghost?

    • giancarlostoro5 hours ago
      Lol this is a reference to Florida (though I love your Space Ghost reference), we have the Kennedy Space Center, and an Airforce base (I guess its a Space Force base now) which has led to this area being referred to as "Space Coast" adding this in case anyone else might be unaware.

      Florida is more interesting than people realize.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Coast

      • GenerWork2 hours ago
        Read "Building a new space coast" and I immediately wondered what our elected officials here in Florida must have felt when they saw that line. I'd love for SpaceX to greatly expand their presence here in Florida, but at the same time the coast is probably too built up here for SpaceX to have a facility like that unless they go into the panhandle.
      • jakeydus5 hours ago
        Oh, I've never thought that Florida was uninteresting. Florida is nothing but ~interesting~.
        • giancarlostoro5 hours ago
          I'm sort of projecting (I've been here most of my life, I got tired of it, now regaining appreciation for Florida the last few years), but I've also noticed others (not you) don't realize there's more to Florida than most people realize.
          • FeloniousHam3 hours ago
            I grew up in South Florida (not a native), and my experience of strip malls and ever widening highways is: if there was a state below Florida, that's where the desperate and unrooted migrants would have kept driving to.

            I spent my childhood fishing in a swimsuit every day I could. I loved it. But as an adult, any south of Ocala and east of Gainesville is a cultural wasteland (with cutouts for Miami and Tampa).

  • rickreynoldssfan hour ago
    I wonder how many environmentalists are losing their shit over this and burring the lawsuit machine.
  • kemotep5 hours ago
    It’s hard to imagine that Cocoa Beach/Titusville isn’t receptive to this. I guess it’s probably cheaper? They don’t have to share the airspace with NASA and other launch companies and it becomes a fully owned and operated Freeport for Musk’s ventures.
    • chasd005 hours ago
      > I guess it’s probably cheaper?

      State of Louisiana was probably on their hands and knees begging. The construction would last decades and anyone with a strong back that can be told what to do and do it will have a job. It would help lift a lot of people in that area out of poverty.

      logistically, i wonder how long it takes to ship from Starbase Texas to Louisiana via barge. It has to be easier to get Starships to Louisiana than the East side of Florida.

      • randallsquared4 hours ago
        They may not have to ship many or any. The first launch of a Texas-constructed Starship could just land the booster in Louisiana for a small fuel penalty, and then ships could likewise land there.
      • officeplant3 hours ago
        > It would help lift a lot of people in that area out of poverty.

        It's not gonna help us do shit. It will line the pockets of the usual wealthy Louisiana oil barons and politicians similar to the Meta Datacenter that got backed door approved by our politicians.

        • kulahanan hour ago
          Crazy how they’ll get you to work for free, but I guess that’s your prerogative. Most people charge for their labor, and money > no money, even if the money you do receive wasn’t equally distributed.
    • checker5 hours ago
      No expert - but from what I've heard, Florida and Texas are constrained for efficent polar (North/South) orbit launches due to restrictions over populated areas. Whereas Louisiana has the Gulf to the south so no/fewer restrictions to worry about.
      • piloto_ciego4 hours ago
        It's for sun-synchronous orbits, almost assuredly. This is for space data centers.

        Man, I was hoping they would pick Alaska (as it's even better for launching into those orbits) - we could really use new industries other than just resource extraction, but Louisiana makes a lot of sense, I just am surprised that there's actually the available land there to do this. Interesting.

        • happyopossum3 hours ago
          > as it's even better for launching into those orbits

          When the weather agrees, yes. Sooooo many launches are scheduled around weather patterns and are affected by weather delays - I'd be shocked if LA didn't have 3-4x more 'launchanble weather' days on average compared to Alaska.

          I'm sure we'll get to the point where we can launch and land without regard to weather outside of the extremes, much as we have with air travel, but we are far from there today.

          • piloto_ciego3 hours ago
            Totally this is reasonable, but, I flew in AK (and a couple thousand hours in the lower 48 too) professionally for over a decade, there are other advantages up here? Not nearly as many thunderstorms up here.

            Icing might be a problem? I would expect there to be basically no reasonable icing accretion possible well before max q? But I'm not sure because that's not my field.

            Regardless, if we're going to be building data centers in space to avoid NIMBYs, we can build rocket infrastructure in Alaska to avoid NIMBYs too. And other infrastructure too? Maybe. I know the SpinLaunch lunatics (I mean that in the most loving way, I love that crazy idea even though it seems insane to me) were getting some sort of permit to launch from Adak. I have been out there a few times and I wish we would try to build more infrastructure out there too... with the NW passage being more traversable due to global warming there's could be a lot more infrastructure there too.

            • Polizeiposaune2 hours ago
              Icing? Watch slow-mo video of any cryogenic liquid-fuelled rocket taking off; you see a shower of ice shards falling off when the engines start.

              Liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellants are loaded at cryogenic temperatures -- boiling point is -183C for O2, -161C for CH4; SpaceX does some amount of subcooling so the propellants may be even cooler than that.

              Ice accumulation while just sitting on the pad is a given, even in tropical climates (the water just freezes out of the air). Might even be a greater problem in (say) florida or louisiana than in Alaska given higher humidity.

        • 3 hours ago
          undefined
        • checker4 hours ago
          Thanks for the extra context!
          • piloto_ciego3 hours ago
            I mean, I'm just speculating? But yeah, I'd be willing to bet serious money (well, in a way, I have) that this is why. Sun-synchronous orbit is something like 7 degrees off of a purely polar orbit? Something like that? So a big southerly coast is extremely valuable for this sort of operation.

            I would absolutely love if we were building launch infrastructure up here. We have tons of open space for it, Cape Chiniak is "fine" but kind of remote. What I wish we would do is put some launcher's on the road system, or close to it, then build out our own space infrastructure here in AK. We really need something other than just resource extraction up here and asteroid mining and space manufacturing is going to be particularly bad for the Alaskan economy. Once it's cheaper to get a big rock from space, or battery tech gets just a little bit cheaper, the economy up here is in deep trouble.

            My little startup is trying to do build some tools up here for local airlines using AI, and I'm able to make money at it? Which is cool - there's not a huge amount of technically talented people here compared to Seattle or the Bay Area, but there's still smart people in these parts, we have resources, and we have available land and permissive building rules. That is so crazy valuable in a world where NIMBY rules everything down south. Like, obviously I don't want them drilling for oil in DNP, but you know, I have been to and worked in the arctic, I'm pretty fine if we were building things up there, or on these remote Aleutian islands, or in these relatively empty and uninhabited/uninhabitable places.

            I wish these companies would look north to build. There are some Nimby d-bags up here, but there are FAR fewer of them than any other place I've ever lived. For context on a hyper micro-scale, my driveway permit outside of Anchorage for our cabin was handled for free with a friendly email to the borough and them wishing me luck. Obviously, other people's mileage may vary, especially for things like giant projects, dams, mines, etc. but the burden here is so much less - you can almost just... feel it. Despite being "harder" to do things up here, it's remarkably permissive.

            Maybe when my little startup is more capable and I've got more money coming in, and I'm spitting out drones from my little machine shop, maybe I'll be able to do more?

        • UltraSane4 hours ago
          Space data centers still make absolutely no sense.
          • ggreer2 hours ago
            Whether they make economic sense or not depends on launch costs. With current operational rockets (such as Falcon 9), the launch costs are too high for space compute to be profitable. All these projects depend on Starship succeeding. If you read Starcloud's white paper[1], they make the case that space data centers can be cheaper than terrestrial ones because of access to 24/7 solar power. I think failure is more likely than success for Starcloud and similar startups, but conditional on Starship lowering launch costs, it does look like the idea can make money.

            1. https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf

            • jubilantian hour ago
              And whether you can radiate all that heat in the vacuum of space
          • lesuorac4 hours ago
            When nobody lets you build a land data center they're going to make a lot of sense.
            • runako2 hours ago
              A hypothetical operational space data center will cost a multiple over a similar terrestrial facility. It would be cheaper/more efficient to offer a municipality or its citizens a fraction of that multiple to secure approvals, now that the bullying approach is running out of steam.

              Instead of installing MWs of illegal gas generation and also still causing local electricity rates to spike, why not arrange to buy down the electricity of local ratepayers and also comply with existing laws & regulations?

              It's worth asking why operators aren't doing that yet. I suspect it's because neither OAI nor Anthropic have an extra $50B-$100B to put out at the moment. We'll see what happens post-IPO.

            • mchusma2 hours ago
              Yeah, the Data Center NIMBY crowd is making these look real good right now.
            • arrosenberg2 hours ago
              The cost of getting them there will be absurd and even if someone was willing to fund it, where do you put the heat they will generate?
            • wat10000an hour ago
              Never going to happen. Yeah, we might get to a point where lots of people object to them in lots of places. But nobody allowing them anywhere? Mongolia wouldn't let you build in a little corner of the vast steppe? Algeria wouldn't let you plop down in a nice patch of unused Sahara?

              The worst that would happen is that it becomes difficult to build in convenient places. That certainly would be annoying. But the problem with space as the solution is that space is by far the least convenient place imaginable, with the possible exception of the bottom of the deep ocean.

            • grim_io4 hours ago
              That's an if, not a when. A very big, hugely improbable if. Nobody? really?
              • piloto_ciego3 hours ago
                I know it sounds bananas, indeed I thought it sounded bananas for a long time, but in a world where we can't get high speed rail built anywhere because of permitting, and there's an artificial scarcity of available land to build, they make a lot of sense.

                In space you can just start. Nobody is really going to stop you.

                • jazzyjackson3 hours ago
                  People are going to be even more pissed off when there are more satellites than stars

                  (I know nominally they’re not visible but they are shortly after launch while moving into position, and at large scale that would be happening all the time, not to mention the other side of burning up in the atmosphere after a few years)

                  • MarkusQ24 minutes ago
                    Do you have any idea how many stars there are?
                    • jazzyjackson16 minutes ago
                      Depends on what city you’re in :p
                      • MarkusQ14 minutes ago
                        Actually, no, they're still there even if you're indoors with your eyes closed.
    • Tuna-Fish4 hours ago
      They want to launch to sun-synchronous.
    • beerandt5 hours ago
      There's also a due south launch path at play.
    • jauntywundrkind5 hours ago
      Seems geography constrained. There's wetlands sure but how much they re allowed to build that out, vs LA where any effort to keep the state from shrinking as it does seems fairly welcome.
    • UltraSane4 hours ago
      I expect Musk picked Louisiana because it has some of the weakest corporate regulations of any state and will probably let SpaceX get away with almost anything.
  • MeetingsBrowser4 hours ago
    > Starbase, Louisiana will be built to support thousands of Starship flights a year. This self-sustaining spaceport will have propellant production, power generation, deep-water shipping capabilities, vehicle processing facilities, and an airport.

    Sounds really neat, but "incredibly ambitious announcement" from an Elon Musk company is starting to wear thin.

    Is this real, or will it join the graveyard of other incredibly ambitious projects that were eventually abandoned to focus on the next incredibly ambitious project.

    • DarmokJalad17014 hours ago
      I can count plenty of incredibly ambitious announcements from them that have turned out amazing! In fact, they are an outlier in how many they have challenges they have taken on and succeeded in.

      [x] Partially reusable rocket that dropped cost to orbit by an order of magnitude. And no, the space shuttle (while an amazing piece of engineering), doesn't really count. It cost a billion+ to refurbish and did nothing to make space more accessible. Now we have businesses that exist purely because the Falcon 9 exists. Heck, the entire new space industry got validated (and hence got investment) due to SpaceX's success.

      [x] Returning human spaceflight capability to the US at a fraction of the price, using the same reusable rocket platform after the old defense primes failed to do so. And then making it cheap enough that it has now also flown about half as many private missions as it did for NASA.

      [x] Global satellite constellation providing gigabit-scale internet with 10000+ satellite (once written off by "experts" as yet another "incredibly ambitious project" that will never happen).

      [x] Commercializing and bringing down the cost of electric cars to the point where they are actually a viable option now (unlike the compliance cars made by OEMs 10 years ago).

      [x] Building the largest rocket to ever exist that now has a clear path to being the first ever fully reusable launch vehicle.

      [x] A BCI implant that has now brought back mobility and communication ability to multiple patients with debilitating conditions.

      Given that each of these were things that no one had done successfully before, or had failed spectacularly - I don't really care that they took longer than initially planned.

      There is, in fact, a graveyard here. It is mostly filled with confident predictions that his companies would never do the things they have since done.

      • wat10000an hour ago
        Both things are true. Musk's companies have done quite a few remarkable things people didn't think were possible, and Musk overpromises to an absurd degree and has left a trail of abandoned projects in his wake.
        • modeless35 minutes ago
          People often cite Hyperloop but he explicitly said he wasn't going to build it himself. They often cite FSD but it is far from abandoned and is driving my car today. What other projects are you thinking of which are actually abandoned? The Tesla solar roof is the biggest one I can think of, I think it's fair to count it as abandoned. I guess the project to make building bricks out of Boring tunnel dirt didn't pan out either, seems pretty minor though.
          • YetAnotherNick25 minutes ago
            Boring company maybe? It's not abandoned, but they likely gave up the idea of an underground system of roads under a city, and just focus on single project individually like traditional construction company.
            • modeless23 minutes ago
              It's far from abandoned. They're actively building TBMs at their factory and tunneling in Vegas and it's pretty different from any other transportation project I'm aware of.
      • miltonlost2 hours ago
        Can't believe you forgot about Mechahitler and the CSAM creation robot! And the AMAZING hyperloop! And FSD is coming next year now (back when he said it in 2016, and every year since)!
        • DarmokJalad1701an hour ago
          > And the AMAZING hyperloop

          Wow! Was there a Musk company dedicated to building that? Where is the press release announcing it? Surely it must have been a big deal if you are so excited about it's failure!

          > And FSD is coming next year now

          It is already here. You can hail one right now in multiple cities.

          And in my own car, I use it every day and have for 2+ years. For the $3k I paid in 2019, I definitely got what I paid for. It's also gotten dramatically better since then. It drives me to and from work every day without having to so much as touch the wheel. And there is no 2018/19 non-Tesla that can do what it does.

          So yes, by all means, keep listing the things you think prove Musk is a fraud. You're mostly just making my point for me.

          • zzrrt30 minutes ago
            > Was there a Musk company dedicated to building that?

            The Boring Company. Are you saying if Musk or his company essentially gives up on building something he hyped for years, it's not a failure?

    • bhelkey4 hours ago
      He often promises incredibly ambitious things that don't happen. But, with a fairly reasonable frequency, he promises incredibly ambitious that do happen.

      For example, SpaceX is responsible for a massive spike in orbital launches [1].

      [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...

      • MeetingsBrowser4 hours ago
        SpaceX and Tesla are both successful companies doing really impressive things, but the more ambitious claims are almost always silently discarded.

        Including robotaxis, tesla semi-trucks, hyperloop, optimus, roadster 2.0, cheap whole home batteries, true FSD, Mars landing, nueralink, and more I'm sure.

        It is difficult for me to get excited about a decades long, ambitious project when the follow through rate is <10%.

        • mindwok4 hours ago
          He is definitely overly optimistic on timelines but pretty much all those things you mentioned are actually still happening, it's too early to say they haven't followed through.
        • downrightmikean hour ago
          Only because of gov't handouts
        • randallsquared4 hours ago
          Several of these do exist already, and one of them was never a promised project. This objection seems like it's from 2016.
      • chasd003 hours ago
        Gwynne Shotwell is the one that makes it happen at SpaceX. She has a pretty good track record so far so I'm not writing her off yet.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell

    • 4 hours ago
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  • timcobb4 hours ago
    Why does this need to be built on the beach?
    • Tuna-Fish4 hours ago
      Because as China has shown, people get angry when you drop hundreds of tons of steel and propellant on people.

      Rockets sometimes fail. SpaceX has one of the lowest failure rates in the industry, but that's still ~0.5%. When they fail near launch, they cause humongous explosions. Because of this, anyone with even a tiny bit of care for people launches over the ocean, so that when it goes oops, it only harms some fish.

      The existing launch sites SpaceX uses are good for launching into prograde (Starbase, TX and Cape Canaveral, FL) and retrograde (Vandenberg SFB, CA) orbits, but they are all either unable or kind of marginal for launching into polar/very highly inclined orbits. (Starbase, TX cannot do it at all, Vandenberg SFB, CA has limitations on when you can launch, and Cape Canaveral, FL needs to fly a dogleg which reduces performance.)

      Part of their plans for the space datacenters involve launching a lot of mass into sun-synchronous (which is very highly inclined) orbits. For that, they need a launch site with the ocean either to the north or to the south.

    • block_dagger4 hours ago
      So the (eastward) flight path isn't over populated land. Rapid disassembly and all that.
    • stronglikedan4 hours ago
      Presumably so rockets can get out over water as quickly as possible in case they fail.
    • jgdxno4 hours ago
      it is to ensure that nothing fall on people's heads
    • 4 hours ago
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    • stonogo4 hours ago
      It doesn't. It doesn't even need to be built, since the Stennis Space Center is already there and already has an excluson zone. This is a vanity project.
      • edm0nd4 hours ago
        it needs to be built so they can launch from it so yes it does
      • Tuna-Fish4 hours ago
        Huh? Stennis Space Center is a propulsion research site, it's not usable for orbital launches. There are towns south of it.
  • daft_pinkan hour ago
    A quick ctrl f for Gulf of America yield no results. Just curious lol.
    • leetrout41 minutes ago
      It's in the comments here tho.
  • sailfast3 hours ago
    Great place to put a star base for all the reasons listed, but, uh… does anyone buy for a second that Elon Musk gives a fig about the Louisiana coastline or the migratory birds?
  • ramesh315 hours ago
    Ah, Louisiana — when even Texas won't let you pollute enough.
  • bigtex883 hours ago
    Isn't this an absolutely horrible idea to build this here? What happens when the next Category 5 hurricane hits this area? It's an absolute certainty that they will get another Category 5 at some point.
    • an hour ago
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    • asadotzler3 hours ago
      Do you know where NASA's launch facilities are? The Florida coast.
      • btmiller2 hours ago
        The Florida coast isn't defined by a huge, meandering river. Take a look at some satellite surveys that showcase how the Mississippi River changes over time. We've of course damned up the shorelines upstream where people live in places like New Orleans so there's no inherent seasonal risk of mass flooding, though of course lose the deposited silt and hence further erode the land we've "saved". Further down south toward the mouth, it's marsh land defined by however the river chooses to meander. I'm not sure where exactly SpaceX is planning to setup in LA, but the entire coastline there is chronically very poor, very unpopulated, and not supported to weather flooding of any kind, especially not hurricanes.
  • simgt2 hours ago
    I wish Musk had stuck to bullying his employees instead of going after everyone, because SpaceX is still building a more interesting future. Although that apparently involves pouring concrete in a wetland.
  • digitalsurgeonz2 hours ago
    considering how the capitalism the chosen framework of the westoid works. i will be watching it (burn and fail) with popcorn and my turkish coffee while enjoying fine persian carpets. this will be loaded with corruption and greed and will fail. I am taking bets.
  • estearum4 hours ago
    > Pecan Island and nearby wetlands are high-value habitat for migratory waterfowl, shorebirds, wading birds, and other coastal wildlife. SpaceX is not developing the full footprint of the land and will preserve wetlands and wildlife habitat.

    Pretty cynical corpo-ambiguity-speak, even by Musk standards.

    We're supposed to be happy they're promising not to develop one-hundred percent of the land footprint? They will leave at least 0.00001% of land area as wetlands and therefore we oughta be happy?

    Such empty bullshit it's more insulting they even put an environment-leaning section on the site. Just say "fuck it, our space fetish is more important than the wetlands."

    • nrmitchi2 hours ago
      Many industries, and SpaceX particularly, will say this like this, then a couple years later be like "oh, it's actually much easier if we destroy it", _do it_, then claim "oh well, nothing to be done now!" and push forward on something else.

      "Promises" or "commitments" like this need to be evaluated based on the previous behavior of the people "making" them (although they were very careful with working to not use either of those words, and just imply them)

    • ceroxylon4 hours ago
      I agree, and the premise is that we're supposed to believe the remaining waterfowl are going to coexist peacefully with... rocket launches?

      Evolution has done stranger things, but my bet is that the birds will find somewhere else to be over learning to not be startled by nearby earth-rumbling explosions.

      • bryanlarsen4 hours ago
        The wetlands around Cape Canaveral/Kennedy are thriving. Men with guns prevent people from getting too close to the rockets, and people do far more damage to wetlands than a rocket launch once every few days.

        A rocket launch every hour or so as SpaceX is promising might be quite different.

        • miltonlost2 hours ago
          Kennedy is also surrounded my federally protected land. SpaceX? Noooope. Never trust Elon.
    • gen2204 hours ago
      Building multi-decade service life infrastructure on the coast in this era of the Anthropocene actually requires you (from an engineering point of view, not merely a regulatory one) to have a buffer zone of wetlands, marshes and sea walls to absorb storm surges.

      You can still choose to read that cynically, but I think the cynical angle is taking moral ecological credit for a pragmatic engineering reality :P

      • estearum3 hours ago
        A single Starship launch produces motorcycle (100dB) to permanent hearing loss + immediate pain (140dB) sound out to about 7 miles.

        Having that intermittently a couple times per day I think will be very disruptive.

        • gen2203 hours ago
          To be clear, I'm not trying to argue that this project is ecologically beneficial or neutral (I think that part is beyond debate for many reasons including the noise pollution you've identified)

          I was just trying to say that the marshland restoration stuff is likely not lip service, insofar as they actually do need wetland buffer zone to keep their launchpads above sea level.

          • estearum3 hours ago
            Well yeah, but that is exactly the cynical lip service that I'm referring to. It's a useless statement for exactly the reason you mention.
          • SmirkingRevenge3 hours ago
            Turns out draining swamps is actually a bad thing.
  • ratelimitsteve3 hours ago
    well, let's see what actually gets done. or even started.
  • johnyzee4 hours ago
    "Watch Now" just shows a black screen with an audio track for me.
    • xyst4 hours ago
      same , you probably have ad blocking on and this video element has tracking/telemetry
  • 1auralynn5 hours ago
    I mean, isn't the LA coast going to be underwater in 50 years?
  • xyst4 hours ago
    Space exploration is a pipe dream and fantasy that billionaires hope to have up and running just in time to "escape" the world they have helped destroy.

    Prove me wrong bro

    • xboxnolifesan hour ago
      I agree mostly with your stance, but I still have to downvote out of principle for the whole "prove me wrong" statement at the end. Hate that argumentative tatic.
  • officeplant3 hours ago
    As a local who will probably end up doing work for or adjacent to this project:

    Fuck Elon get out of my state.

  • krunck4 hours ago
    I used to be interested in SpaceX development. Then I came to the realization that SpaceX is going to be used primarily for the militarization of space: hauling space based weaponry, weaponry drop ships, surveillance satellites, etc.

    I still feel glad for the SpaceX engineers and scientists who succeed and doing new and innovative stuff. But their employer is just like every other military contractor sucking on the unlimited teets of the US Government. What a waste of taxpayer money.

    I grew up in during the Cold War and I'm sick of this shit. America always thinking it has to dominate any country that doesn't bow down before it.

    • asadotzler3 hours ago
      It will be comms mostly, and mostly civilian. That other stuff will happen, but it'll be dwarfed by the effort of supporting several tens of millions of Starlink users.
    • mycodendral4 hours ago
      what's the alternative
    • infamouscow3 hours ago
      This is not a serious position.

      Just because you personally prefer to be subjugated doesn't mean anyone else does. That necessarily means being able to defend yourself from bad actors, and history has proven the best way to do that is by investing in technology.

  • maeln4 hours ago
    Feels like an impossible project that will end up being 5% of what was advertised (the 5% being what was actually planned all along), but is made with folie des grandeurs to pump a stock who's hype has died down.
    • 1970-01-0117 minutes ago
      The stock really didn't move much (+2%) with this big announcement. It is a city; not a short-term idea we can forget about in two weeks.
  • moberley3 hours ago
    Will they have to rename the other Starbase Louisiana? https://starbasela.org/
  • fblp3 hours ago
    I wonder if we're at the point where this shoreline critical infrastructure would need more physical security / protection from the drones of adversaries.
  • dzonga2 hours ago
    Elon - great product guy - he has to let go of his scammy tendencies of overpromising stuff.

    just one launch base will transform the Louisiana economy.

    • fastballan hour ago
      Nth order effects are powerful things. A single person could change the trajectory of Louisiana in a meaningful way.
  • sfblah2 hours ago
    Humans will never be "multiplanetary" without something like warp drive.