Elon Musk in 2013: Why SpaceX Needed a Commercial Spaceport — and Texas Was the Leading Candidate

Here's Elon Musk in 2013, explaining SpaceX's plans to build a commercial spaceport in Texas, which would later become Starbase.

“Cape Canaveral is good for eastward launches. Vandenberg for southerly launches. And we figure we need a third launch site that's a commercial launch site.

Because Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg are Air Force bases which is cool, and obviously, there's an important need for Air Force space launch bases, as there is for Air Force airports.

But there's also a need for commercial airports. Just like you wouldn't expect commercial airliners to land at an Air Force base at a normal course of events, it makes sense to have a commercial spaceport.

We need to be able to launch eastward. And we want to be close to the Equator. That basically means the potential states are Virginia through Texas, going south, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

We need to stay on US territory, because rocket technology is considered an advanced weapons technology, so it's very difficult to export that to other countries. So, those are our options.

Right now, Texas is arguably the leading candidate.

But we need certain legislation passed that's supportive of space launch. I don't think it's particularly controversial, but one of the things we need is we need is to be able to close the beach when we're doing a launch.

And Texas has the Open Beaches Act. We can't launch if there's someone right next to the rocket on the beach. I don't think it's a particularly controversial thing. It's pretty straightforward.

Then, we need a little bit of protection for the-1-in-10,000-person case who complains about the thing. We had this dude who filed a lawsuit against us for our rocket development site in Central Texas, near Waco. He's not even in the same county. He's in a neighboring county. And he also thinks the CIA is listening to his brainwaves. So, we need just a little bit of protection for people like that, so we're not spending a ton of time in court.

That's basically what we're asking for. It's nothing major, and I think it's likely to move forward.

If things go well, there'd be a decision this year, and then we'd start construction next year. And then, probably, the first launches would take place from there in two to three years.”

SXSW, March 09, 2013