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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
SpaceX hasn’t given details about its motivation for this seemingly complex and expensive undertaking, other than a reply tweet in which Musk said the launches and landings had to be “far enough away so as not to bother heavily populated areas.” The company’s plan to eventually carry out up to three launches and landings per day would certainly necessitate putting some serious distance between the launch site and people; most of us could only handle about one sonic boom a month, if that.
A wide no-fly zone and road closures go into effect on launch days. And if Starships do eventually shuttle people around Earth or beyond on a daily basis, the takeoff and landing points would need to be conveniently located; going a few miles offshore is likely better in this regard than finding a huge empty swathe of land in, say, New Mexico or Nevada.
Rather than building the launchpads from scratch, it’s possible SpaceX would refurbish existing oil rigs; the bigger rigs are about the size of two football fields, and there are plenty of them in the Gulf of Mexico, though only a couple very near Brownsville. Given the ailing state of the oil industry, especially after the pandemic, it’s likely there will be rigs to be had for cheap.
One outstanding question is what sort of impact the launch pads would have on marine life, especially if something were to go wrong.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Sunday June 21 2020, @08:45PM
Airship to Orbit [jpaerospace.com] wants to build lighter-than-air "Dark-Sky Stations" for basically that purpose, though at 42km rather than 10. You'd take an airship from the ground to the station, and then transfer to the orbital vehicle.
Though in their case the orbital vehicle is a rocket propelled ultra-light airship that takes many days to accelerate to orbital speed as it slowly climbs out of the atmosphere entirely.