This is John Batchelor. Conversation with my friend Bob Zimmerman. I learned there's a mystery in Louisiana.

The Louisiana legislature has moved to make it possible to sell a very large piece of land on their coast to an unnamed space company.

Bob has guesses, but there's no confirmation of any of it.

Why is the sale necessary? Why now? Why Louisiana?

Bob answers the questions that we can at this moment.

Louisiana for space, question mark. More of this later tonight.

Louisiana has decided to go into space, to be in space, to promote space.

What are they up to, Bob?

All right.

So we've had this rumor for several weeks about some big aerospace company, SpaceX is the number one candidate, but unknown, doing research and making proposals to buy a 200 square mile plot of land on the southern coast of Louisiana near a place called Pecan Island.

This is a piece of land that Exxon owns that it's not using.

We don't know at SpaceX, but that's what the rumors say.

Legislators in the statehouse have said there are two big aerospace companies looking into buying this land, and they have nondisclosure agreements with those companies. They can't say what they are.

But in the process, it appears the negotiations with this one or two companies, the legislature

has now passed several laws favorable to aerospace companies to protect them.

One of the laws gives them tax breaks relating to sales and property taxes, but the other

one's more interesting because it relates to Boca Chica.

The other bill was lawsuit protection.

It's designed to protect aerospace companies from ferviless lawsuits.

And we all know that SpaceX has had a lot of problems in Bocahika

with repeated frivolous lawsuits

from activists, outside activists who just hate Elon Musk. And so this legislation, it appears that

...