Musk: 10,000 Starship Launches a Year Is 'Just From Starbase Louisiana'

Elon Musk said on X at 2:07 AM AST Wednesday that "10k Starship launches/year is just from Starbase Louisiana." The one-line post quoted an X user who summarized SpaceX's comment to the Federal Aviation Administration. Musk did not say when that rate would be reached.

In its Oct. 26 filing on the FAA's request for information on new spaceports and launch-corridor airspace (Docket FAA-2026-9736), SpaceX wrote that it "anticipates conducting 10,000 launches per year itself." The filing gives no site or date for that figure. It describes SpaceX's planned Starbase Louisiana spaceport as "designed for approximately 30 launches and reentries per day," counting launches and reentries together. The FAA's own notice anticipates 10,000 FAA-licensed launches and reentries a year across the US by 2035.

SpaceX also argued in the filing that the FAA's air traffic processes, not rockets, are now the main limit on launch cadence, and said it gives its Cleared airspace platform to most major US airlines at no cost.

Starbase Louisiana is still a plan. State officials announced the $100 billion spaceport near Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish in August and said it is designed for "thousands of launches annually," with construction expected to begin in 2027 and the first launch targeted as soon as 2029. No FAA launch license or environmental review for the site has been reported. The FAA has separately been reviewing a SpaceX request to raise its Texas Starbase limit from 25 launches a year to as many as 456.

Sources: Musk's post; SpaceX comment to the FAA; FAA docket FAA-2026-9736