At a press conference held this afternoon at the National Press Club in Washington DC, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced that last week's soft-landing of the leg-equipped Falcon 9 rocket was a success. The company's founder also let slip that SpaceX has chosen southern Texas as the location where it will build its own launch facility.

According to Houston Chronicle science reporter Eric Berger, Musk made the spaceport location announcement near the end of the news conference in response to a question from the audience. SpaceX has been searching for a location to build its own spaceport for some time and had narrowed the search down to Florida, Georgia, or Texas.

Southerly locations are preferred for rocket launches in the northern hemisphere because the closer a launch is to the equator, the more of a momentum "boost" the rocket gets from the earth's rotation. This, coupled with favorable economic terms, is why the final location contenders were all southern states.

The Chronicle quotes Musk as noting that SpaceX is still waiting on "an environmental clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration," and that the company expects to have the spaceport up and running "in a couple of years."

Musk also took the opportunity to get in a dig at the United Launch Alliance, the joint Lockheed Martin/Boeing venture that currently oversees the US government's space launch operations. "I don't know why their rockets are so insanely expensive," he joked. Currently, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket can put cargo into low Earth orbit at a cost of about $1,864 per pound ($4,109 per kilogram); by means of comparison, a ULA-operated Delta IV Heavy costs about $8,600 per pound ($18,900 per kilogram). SpaceX ultimately aims to drive their delivery costs down to under $1,000 per pound with the development of newer, larger rockets like the proposed Falcon Heavy.

Ars has reached out to SpaceX for comment and will update if we hear back.