STARBASE, Texas — Plumes of vapor burst from the launchpad beneath the rocket, then a flame, pale in the early morning light, visible but silent.
The rocket rose steadily. A seagull screeched. People yelled: “Whoa!” and “Go!”
Then, as the rocket pierced the clouds, the sound arrived, about 30 seconds after ignition — a fast, pulsing rumble, like the thrum of one car window cracked open on the highway, but much stronger, deep enough to feel in your chest and rattle windows.
SpaceX’s Starship — a 40-story, two-stage behemoth, the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown — climbed over the Gulf as hundreds watched from the tip of South Padre Island last week. It was the 14th test launch for Starship, and the first time the company would attempt to get the rocket into orbit and deliver working satellites to space.
Spectators wait along the jetties for a SpaceX launch Starship Flight 14 in South Padre Island, Texas, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Sophia Germer
What SpaceX learns from this launch, it will carry with it to Louisiana, where Elon Musk plans to build a $100 billion, 10-launchpad spaceport — several times larger than his Texas site. From Louisiana, he hopes to one day launch rockets at a clip comparable to the pace of departures from Louis Armstrong International Airport.
And when SpaceX lands in Vermilion Parish, the spaceflight superfans will follow. Some are glad they will soon not have to travel so far.
“I want to put down my gun and watch the launches from the duck blind,” said Kirk Robicheaux, 58, who hunts on his family’s land on White Lake in Vermilion Parish, near Pecan Island, only a few miles from the location of the newly announced Starbase Louisiana, SpaceX’s next spaceport.
Robicheaux watches every launch online, but this was his first in person.
“I have my concern about it affecting the ecosystem and the culture,” he said. “But I think it’s worth doing all that just because of what it’ll do for Louisiana. We’re such a poor state right now.”
A clock counts down to SpaceX’s Starship Flight 14 launch in Starbase, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
The Times-Picayune
‘If it blows up, it’s cool’
By the time the countdown starts, a pop-up society has formed around the rocket, with its own subcultures, rituals and monuments.
The night before launch, 10 miles from the pad, several men hoisted upright a 50-foot-tall bronze statue of Prometheus, who, in Greek mythology, stole fire from the gods and gave it to the mortals. It was transported here from France by a group of right-wing sculptors whose past work includes $300 plaster busts of Canadian conservative provocateur Jordan Peterson.
The titan looms over a misshapen foam-and-fiberglass statue of the SpaceX founder’s head, with an inscription that reads: “Elon Musk aka MemeLord,” inspired by a 2019 drawing that went viral on Reddit. Down the road, past the Border Patrol station, a group of twentysomethings was midway through a marathon livestreaming session, drinking beers on top of a raggedy RV and filming themselves on their phones.
Spectators watch from Boca Chica Blvd. as a 50ft Prometheus by French sculptors Atelier Missor is prepared for installation along the road that leads to SpaceX near Starbase, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Sophia Germer
Launches draw certain types. Many of the spectators were flight enthusiasts or pilots. There were older folks who recalled the heyday of the space race. Some had come as much for Musk as for the rocket, subscribers to his worldview.
Because the launch site is on a public road, spaceflight fans can drive up nearly to the base of the rocket, which is about 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. In its shadow, a small crowd wearing the tech-worker uniform of plain T-shirts and jeans, some in SpaceX caps, snapped selfies.
ElonDAO’s bust of Elon Musk, almost 9ft tall, stands next to the highway near Starbase, Texas, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Sophia Germer
Previous launch attempts have had mixed results. One rocket exploded as it soared over the Caribbean, dropping rocket parts on beaches and roads in Turks and Caicos and forcing commercial airliners to divert to avoid flaming debris.
Another launch attempt blew up part of the launchpad, showering nearby homes with dust and shooting hunks of concrete into the neighboring wildlife refuge. Yet another, a successful test flight, carried the rocket’s first payload into space: a toy banana. SpaceX ran the banana through the federal cargo-approval process as a dry run for the satellites it would launch later.
Kick streamers stand on an RV near Starship launch pad in Starbase, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Sophia Germer
To Musk, each of these attempts was, in its own way, a win. The goal of testing a rocket is to collect data to fine-tune its functioning. Failures are expected. SpaceX engineers have a tongue-in-cheek acronym for that expected outcome: RUD, or rapid unscheduled disassembly.
“We’ve got a lot of land with nobody around, and so if it blows up, it’s cool,” Musk said at a press conference in 2018.
It’s a line that residents nearby have not forgotten.
Musk told Fox News last year that his goal is to “make life multiplanetary,” as an insurance policy for life on Earth.
A shrimp boat travels in Port Isabel Passage as a SpaceX Starship is prepared for a launch near South Padre Island, Texas, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
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“Eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun,” he said. “We do at some point need to be a multi-planet civilization because Earth will be incinerated.”
To some in Brownsville, a city of nearly 200,000 people, 20 miles west of the launchpad, Musk’s priorities seem misaligned.
“Humanity needs help on Earth first,” said Bekah Hinojosa, a Brownsville resident and the founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network. “People in Brownsville need help. So many people I know can’t even make rent.”
Spectators wait along the jetties for a SpaceX launch Starship Flight 14 in South Padre Island, Texas, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Sophia Germer
At the viewing area, the spectators were optimistic about this launch’s chances of success. Around 2 a.m., five miles from the launchpad, hundreds gathered to wait out the hours until the 75-minute launch window that would begin at 7:15 a.m. Teslas, the electric cars made by another of Musk’s companies, filled the parking lot.
Allen Choi, 34, prepared to see his first launch. Drawn by the engineering of spaceflight, which he described as marvelous, he took a 14-hour flight from Hong Kong the day before and hadn’t slept at all.
Mia Xu, 32, came in from Austin with friends to see the launch, also a first for them.
Kick streamers wait on an air mattress for the launch of the SpaceX Starship Flight 14 as they film themselves in South Padre Island, Texas, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Sophia Germer
“I would just like to see the future,” she said.
Nearby, the livestreamers had parked their RV and were dozing on air mattresses. They had been filming continuously, broadcasting live to the internet since the day before, their cameras trained on themselves even as they slept.
Robicheaux, the Pecan Island hunter, has long been a spaceflight fan, said his wife, Erica, 54.
Spectators watch from South Padre Island, Texas, jetties as Starship launches from Starbase, Texas, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
The Times-Picayune
“He loves all that techie stuff and automation,” she said. “He brings all that to my house and I’m like, ‘I don’t want that. We’re too stupid already. People need to think for themselves a little more.’”
While Kirk is enthusiastic about Starbase Louisiana, Erica’s wary.
“Once it’s gone, it’s gone,” she said of the landscape. “Once they build that Starship base, that’s it. We can’t get it back.”
Ryan Wycoff, 28, a commercial airline pilot and flight instructor, served pancakes out of the back of his Tesla Cybertruck. This was his 19th launch, and he doesn’t intend to miss any.
“If I’m not here, the rocket’s not launching,” he said.
Ryan Wycoff makes pancakes out the back of his Tesla Cybertruck as he waits for the launch of the SpaceX Starship Flight 14 in South Padre Island, Texas, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Sophia Germer
He’s created an app, called Visit Starbase, that contains all the info any spectator could need: where to watch the launch, how to get there and when, where to eat in town afterward. He hopes Musk will notice it, and either offer him a job or send him a cease-and-desist.
“Either way, he’ll know me,” he said.
Ryan Wycoff shows how his app Visit Starbase works, as he waits for a Starship launch in South Padre Island, Texas, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Sophia Germer
Though he’s a visitor, he has heard what the people who live here say.
“If you talk to the locals, they hate it,” he said. “But it brings in so much money for the local economy.”
A recent report from SpaceX estimates that the company has injected $13 billion into the regional economy over two years, employs 4,300 people directly and has generated $305 million in indirect tax revenue for municipal governments.
New restaurants have opened downtown since the company came to town. Sprawling new subdivisions have popped up, catering to the newly arrived, wealthy workforce. Home values are up.
But the area is still visibly poor. Buildings are boarded up and abandoned, and near the plasma center that pays around $100 for a first-time donation, residents walk through town wearing blue bandages around their upper arms.
‘Go for orbit’
Minutes after liftoff, the stages of the rocket separated. The Super Heavy booster fell back to Earth, igniting its engines over the Gulf’s waters to soften its landing, and splashed down. The upper bullet-shaped Ship stage of the rocket, as SpaceX calls it, continued on, propelled by its six engines, until one of them unexpectedly shut down early in its climb through the atmosphere.
The Ship was now coasting on a path that would bring it back down to Earth without reaching orbit, unless it fired again. For 20 tense minutes, engineers in SpaceX’s control room at Starbase checked readings. Prior to launch, they’d stressed caution. They’d only put the Ship in orbit if everything checked out.
“The go/no-go poll for orbit has finished,” Dan Huot, SpaceX’s webcast host, told viewers. “We are go for orbit.”
Starship is launched from Starbase, Texas, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
The Times-Picayune
The Ship lit an engine and settled into orbit about 170 miles up. It deployed the first 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites — a new version of the internet-supplying satellites that are too large to be transported by SpaceX’s workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9. It was the first working payload that Starship had ever delivered to space.
SpaceX cut the flight short, sending the Ship around the planet twice rather than the planned six orbits. It descended toward the Pacific, north of Hawaii, about three hours after liftoff.
It landed in the Pacific and exploded.
This is what Louisiana can expect, many times over. The company has spent around $7 billion in capital investment in Texas, according to Gilberto Salinas, the president of the Greater Brownsville EDC, an economic development organization.
In Louisiana, SpaceX plans to spend $100 billion.
A 50ft Prometheus by French sculptors Atelier Missor stands next to the highway near Starbase, Texas, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Sophia Germer
Even with all that money coming in, some remain skeptical that locals will see their lives improve.
“Louisiana needs help,” said Erica Robicheaux. “But I don’t know if we’ve changed the politician culture enough for us to truly benefit from the money coming in.”