Across a rural pocket of cotton and soybean fields in northeast Louisiana, Meta, the eighth most profitable company in the world, is attempting to build America’s largest data center. 

The project, which is located in Richland Parish, an area home to three times as many Black residents as the national average, has seen its anticipated investments reach $250 billion. 

But earlier this month, Louisiana regulators decided the public doesn’t get to know two of the most basic things about it: how many jobs it will actually create, or how much electricity it will actually use.

Out where Louisiana's coastal marshlands stretch thin into the Gulf of Mexico, the aerospace giant is laying claim to 195 square miles of land. On an isolated strip known as Pecan Island, SpaceX plans to construct a $100 billion spaceport designed to launch thousands of Starships a year into the night sky.

Multi-billionaire Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX has announced that it will build its largest launch site yet in the southern US state of Louisiana.

Construction of the $100bn (£73bn) project - named Starbase, Louisiana - is due to start next year, with the 125,000-acre (50,585-hectare) site expanding on the company's operations beyond its current Texas headquarters and locations in Florida.

It will be used to "support thousands of Starship flights a year with missions launching to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond," SpaceX said on Tuesday.