Sourced or not stated
Every factual claim in a dispatch carries a link to where it came from. If we do not know something, we write that we do not know it. If we get something wrong, we correct it in place with a note rather than quietly editing.
Who we are
A merch company that pays for a newsroom.
Or a newsroom that pays for itself with t-shirts. Depends on the day.
In August 2026, a company that lands rockets on boats announced it was going to build the largest spaceport in the world in the marsh south of Pecan Island — about fifty miles from Lafayette, in a parish of roughly 57,000 people where the biggest employers have historically been agriculture, seafood, and the oil and gas service industry.
For about a week, everybody came. Satellite trucks in Abbeville. Reporters asking people to spell "Vermilion." A lot of stories about a billionaire and a swamp, most of them written by people who had never driven LA-82 and would never drive it again.
Then they left, and the actual project started.
The part nobody covers
What happens next is four years of permitting dockets, wetlands determinations, FAA licensing, road contracts, drainage districts, and parish council votes. It is not glamorous. It does not have a news hook. It is also where every decision that will affect people here actually gets made.
So we started writing it down. Not from a bureau in Houston — from here, by people who are going to be living with the outcome.
And the shirts?
The shirts came first, honestly. Somebody made a joke aboutlaissez les bons temps lancer and it was too good not to print.
But they turned out to be the business model. Advertising would put us in a conflict with the exact companies we need to write about. A paywall on local reporting in a parish this size reaches nobody. Selling a good shirt to somebody who thinks the joke is funny funds the boring work of reading a 400-page environmental filing, and nobody has to compromise anything.
So: buy a shirt if you like it. Read the dispatches whether you buy anything or not. They are free and they always will be.
How we work
Four rules we do not bend.
Our bias is on the label
We sell rocket merch. That gives us an obvious interest in this project going well, and you should read us knowing that. It is also why we make a point of publishing the inconvenient parts.
Original art only
Every design is drawn by hand as vector art built for screenprinting. We do not use SpaceX logos, marks, mission patches, or imagery on anything we sell, and we never will.
Made close to home
Printed in Louisiana. When we can choose a local shop over a cheaper one three states away, we choose the local one. It costs us a couple of points of margin and it is worth it.
Say it plainly
Cajun Rocket Co is an independent, locally owned company. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or connected to Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) in any way. All third-party names and marks belong to their respective owners.
We are enthusiasts and neighbors, not a contractor, vendor, or partner. Nothing on this site is official information about the project. When we report something, we link to where it came from so you can check it yourself.
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