Drilling program to determine foundation requirements for Starbase Louisiana
https://x.com/thelacoast/status/209377714822178843663
u/Total_Surround833 1d ago
Pretty standard stuff . I’ll save them some $$ , it’s a swamp . Going to need to go pretty deep to find bedrock
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u/warp99 1d ago
Same as Boca Chica. No bedrock available so use friction piles - but how deep is the question they need to answer.
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u/Paver58 1d ago edited 1d ago
Spacing and size of pile can reduce the depth. Any pile closing in on 100 ft pose transportation challenges. Depending on the total number of pile feet (all piles laid end to end) needed for the project opens the option of bringing in a prestress plant to manufacture the piles near site. Materials to supply a plant are much cheaper to transport by barge than trucking cost for transporting finished piles. Barging in finished piles could possibly be an option depending on any near by plants with water access. The “Bean Counters” figure those details. Lake Pontchartrain Causeway had a plant for all practical purposes, on site. Raw materials & finished piles were both barged.
Just a SWAG on # of piles to physically support that amount of infrastructure, 100,000+…….Shorter piles closer together.
I was on a project for a bridge not far from the Louisiana coast where when you set the pile, it would drop an average of 33’ under it’s own weight before the pile hammer even touched it.
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u/noncongruent 17h ago
Prestressed piles are typically 40' in length, you stack them as you drive them, one on top of the other, until you reach your target bearing. Setting up a temporary prestressed plant is a thing, they did that here in the Dallas area to build part of the tollway over in Grand Prairie. The plant made prestressed deck panels on I think a dual line setup.
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u/Martianspirit 1d ago
They did not use prestressed steel piles at Boca Chica. They drilled the hole, sank rebar and filled them with concrete.
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u/Paver58 1d ago
Not throwing shade on your response, but good luck to the engineers using that considering the history of the Mississippi River Delta.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mississippi_Delta_Lobes.jpg
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u/MDCCCLV 1d ago
They mounded dirt on top for quite a few months to dry out the soil below first too.
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u/BadTraditional401 1d ago
No bedrock there, at 200 ft....
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u/Complex_Earth_68 1d ago
Bedrock there is deep AF. Thousands of feet deep.
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u/Martianspirit 1d ago
So similar to Boca Chica. They will need to use friction piles.
Edit: I see that was already mentioned.
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u/upcrackclawway 1d ago
This whole Louisiana thing feels like the part of Factorio when you go clear a massive piece of land and you’re this time you’re gonna make your final final factory and there are so many great ideas and so much headroom and you could never run out of space
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u/BadTraditional401 1d ago edited 1d ago
'Drilling programs' aka geotech surveys, are done on all large scale building projects. The challenge here is it's in a swamp and 200 feet is really deep for geotech. South Louisiana 'soil' is basically thousands of feet of alluvial sediment deposited over centuries. You're not going to strike rock down there, and borings keep going until the structural engineers determine the clay or sand layers are thick and stiff enough to carry the load of everything above it.
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u/MyKillK 1d ago
It's going to be interesting to see just how much work it's going to take to eventually support a huge starbase. Ground settling and sinking has to be a real concern. Crazy amounts of steel and concrete will be needed.
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u/flshr19 Shuttle tile engineer 1d ago
Evidently, $150B of work to begin. That buys site preparation and 20 OLM/tower installations in pairs and maybe 10 tank farms. Add another $150B to $300B for on-site LOX, LN2 and LCH4 production and distribution pipelines to the tank farms and to the launch pads. The total cost could approach $1T for Starbase LA. My estimates.
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u/CW3_OR_BUST 1d ago
The starbase at Boca Chica started soil surcharging back in 2015. They literally dumped a mountain on the site to get it ready. There ain't nothing else you can do for a few years except build a highway and power lines. They're gonna be flying Starship to the moon from one of the other two sites before they even lay concrete there.
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u/warp99 1d ago
Overlay on the drilling map of the proposed launch site
Photo of the launch site with areas of Mulberry Cheniere marked
For those who like me were not aware
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u/noncongruent 16h ago
You may find this video interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu16K_AMuaY
Zach Golden does a deep dive into the flame trench at Massey's.
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u/Decronym Acronyms Explained 1d ago edited 12h ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| LCH4 | Liquid Methane |
| LN2 | Liquid Nitrogen |
| LOX | Liquid Oxygen |
| OLM | Orbital Launch Mount |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by request
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 109 acronyms.
[Thread #9110 for this sub, first seen 1st Sep 2026, 03:20]
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