SpaceX just won approval for a huge new Starship base in Louisiana, which could be very good for shareholders — but only if paying customers actually show up.

• SpaceX is building a $100 billion launch site in Louisiana, on top of its Texas and Florida sites.
• The renderings point to 14 launch pads by the 2030s, far more than the four or five Wall Street expected.
• More pads could mean far more launches, and in the best case push the stock roughly 5x over the next decade — that would still work out to about 17% a year.
• The catch: there is no obvious customer. NASA and defense can only pay for a few launches, and launching Starlink or SpaceX's own space data centers is a cost, not revenue.
• SpaceX also needs to raise something like $500 billion in the next few years for the base and AI buildout, so a lot of debt is coming.

Outlook: The stock is priced close to fair value on current plans, so the upside depends on demand that does not exist yet.