SpaceX has told the Federal Aviation Administration that it expects to fly 10,000 launches a year on its own, and that the thing standing in the way isn’t rockets. It’s the way the FAA manages airspace. Then Elon Musk added the kicker: “10k Starship launches/year is just from Starbase Louisiana.”
The numbers come from SpaceX’s comments on an FAA request for information about where new U.S. spaceports should go and how “priority airspace” for launch corridors should work. The comment window on docket FAA-2026-9736 closed on Oct. 26. Musk’s post went up on Wednesday, Oct. 28 at 2:07 a.m. ET (11:07 p.m. PT on Oct. 27), which was 3:07 p.m. JST.
What SpaceX actually told the FAA
The FAA itself started this. In its Aug. 25 Federal Register notice, the agency said the U.S. flew 217 of the world’s 329 launches in 2025 and expects the national rate to reach 10,000 FAA-licensed launches and reentries a year by 2035, “driving the cadence from a few launches a week to several launches and reentries a day.”
SpaceX’s reply, in passages shared on X and reported by TeslaNorth, was basically: that’s us. “SpaceX anticipates conducting 10,000 launches per year itself,” the filing says. It then argues that the FAA’s current air traffic control structure and processes “are outdated and incapable of supporting a materially higher launch or reentry cadence than current levels,” which it puts at 182 licensed launches and 7 licensed reentries in 2025.
SpaceX also says its planned Starbase, Louisiana, spaceport “is designed for approximately 30 launches and reentries per day.” Do the math and 30 a day lands right around 11,000 a year, which is why Musk says the 10,000 figure covers Louisiana alone. Starbase, Texas, and the Florida pads would be extra.
The company’s pitch for fixing the bottleneck is software. SpaceX runs a real-time launch-status and airspace tool called Cleared, and the filing says most major U.S. airlines already get access to it and its API at no cost. SpaceX wants that kind of live data piped into FAA flow-management and controller tools, so hazard areas can shrink and move with the rocket instead of closing big chunks of sky for long windows. It also argues that priority corridors should be open to private high-cadence sites like the two Starbases, not just federal ranges.
Starbase Louisiana, the short version
SpaceX announced the site on Aug. 25. According to Louisiana Economic Development, it’s a $100 billion investment in Vermilion Parish, near Pecan Island, on former Exxon land. At full buildout it’s planned to have five launch complexes with two pads each, plus propellant production, power generation, vehicle processing and housing. The state expects 3,000 direct jobs over 10 years. Construction is expected to start in 2027, with the first launch targeted for as soon as 2029.
Benzinga notes that Musk has said operations could begin in 2028, though 2029 is more likely. None of this paperwork approves 10,000 flights, of course. Licensing, environmental review and air-traffic integration all still have to happen, and the FAA is separately reviewing how many Starship flights Texas can host.
It also lines up with what SpaceX laid out on its Q3 earnings call, where the goal was catching both stages and getting Starship to a weekly rhythm in 2027. Weekly is step one. Thirty a day is the end state. And all that cadence has to pay for itself somewhere, which is where Starlink and SpaceX’s growing compute business, like its $40 billion GPU financing, come in.
Lester’s take
Thirty launches a day. I live in Tokyo, where I can’t even get my Model Y to drive itself to the convenience store, and SpaceX is planning a rocket every 48 minutes from a swamp in Louisiana. The part I love is the airspace argument. SpaceX is basically telling the FAA, “Our rockets are ready, it’s your calendar app that’s broken,” and then pointing out that it already built the calendar app and gave it to the airlines for free. That’s the most SpaceX move possible. I’ve bought FSD four times without being able to use it here, so I know a thing or two about waiting on regulators. My advice to the FAA: don’t make Starship wait as long as I’ve waited for FSD in Japan. Someone should get to use the thing they paid for.
Sources: Elon Musk on X, SpaceX comments on FAA docket FAA-2026-9736 (excerpts shared on X), Federal Register (FAA RFI), TeslaNorth, Benzinga, Louisiana Economic Development.
— Lester Miyashiro, EVX News
Featured image: Starship lifts off from Starbase, Texas, during Flight Test 11. Photo: Shujianyang / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).