{"id":819265,"date":"2026-08-19T23:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T23:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/819265\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T23:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T23:20:12","slug":"la-gov-jeff-landry-invites-officials-to-spacex-event-business-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/819265\/","title":{"rendered":"La. Gov. Jeff Landry invites officials to SpaceX event | Business News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gov. Jeff Landry is inviting hundreds of Louisiana elected officials and business leaders to Abbeville next week to announce that Elon Musk’s company SpaceX is planning to build a multibillion-dollar spaceport<\/a> on a roughly 18-mile stretch of the coast about 45 miles southwest of Lafayette.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An invitation, sent via email by the governor\u2019s office and Louisiana Economic Development on Wednesday, said Landry and LED Secretary Susan Bourgeois “cordially invite you to join them in announcing a defining moment for Louisiana’s future.”<\/p>\n

The event is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Tuesday in Abbeville, the Vermilion Parish seat and the closest city to the site of the planned spaceport.<\/p>\n

Landry’s office declined to comment but sources familiar with the deal said the subject of the announcement is the SpaceX project.<\/p>\n

The announcement has been anticipated for weeks<\/a> and is expected to lay out the aerospace company’s plans to build a launch facility along the coast that will blast SpaceX’s reusable Starship rockets\u00a0\u2014 among the most powerful ever built\u00a0\u2014 out over the Gulf and into orbit.<\/p>\n

The project could bring potentially thousands of jobs and a massive influx of aerospace and other commercial activity to the coastal areas sandwiched between two wildlife refuges and known as a popular spot for recreational hunting and fishing.<\/p>\n

The facility will be located on land\u00a0\u2014 some 130,000 acres in all\u00a0\u2014 that was owned for decades by ExxonMobil. The land was turned over to the state as part of a settlement<\/a> of dozens of lawsuits blaming the oil giant for pollution and coastal land loss.<\/p>\n

Court records show that a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on Tuesday signed an order dismissing the coastal suit that had been brought by Vermilion Parish against Exxon, a signal that the long-running case is over and that the settlement is finalized.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The land is key to the state’s deal with SpaceX, which is expected to take control of the site through a sale, donation or long-term lease.<\/p>\n

Coastal protection measures are expected to be announced as part of the deal.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has declined to comment. But company executives, including Musk, have said in recent weeks that they need more launch sites to meet Musk’s ambitious goals of launching up to 100,000 Starlink mobile and broadband satellites and, eventually, up to 1 million orbital data center satellites.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Louisiana site is attractive to the company for several reasons.<\/a> It is remote and sparsely populated with easy access to natural gas lines and proximity to the Gulf, which is ideal for launching satellites along a north-south orbit<\/a>, and the Intracoastal Waterway, which can accommodate heavy barges carrying rockets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also, the state legislature this spring passed a sweeping package of incentives that shield aerospace companies from liability related to launch activity and prevents local governments or individuals from being able to sue to block them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week, Musk’s personal jet was spotted at the Lafayette airport for several hours.<\/p>\n

Among those to receive invitation to next week’s announcement were members of the Louisiana legislature, Abbeville City Council and Vermilion Parish Police Jury.<\/p>\n

Rep. Jack McFarland, a Republican from Jonesboro who steered the incentive package through the legislature earlier this year at the request of the Landry administration, said he plans to make the four-hour drive for the announcement.<\/p>\n

“I’m excited for another economic investment opportunity for Louisiana,” McFarland said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Jeff Landry is inviting hundreds of Louisiana elected officials and business leaders to Abbeville next week to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[8803,79,193],"class_list":["post-819265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-hardwall","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}