One of the most important launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will develop into vacant later this yr after the ultimate flight of United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket. SpaceX is wanting to make the sprawling facility a new house for the Starship launch car.
The environmental evaluation for SpaceX’s proposal to take over Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral is getting underway now, with three in-person public conferences and one digital assembly scheduled for March to gather feedback from native residents, in accordance to a new web site describing the plan.
Then federal companies, led by the Department of the Air Force, will develop an environmental influence assertion to consider how Starship launch and touchdown operations will have an effect on the land, air, and water round SLC-37, which sits on Space Force property on the Atlantic shoreline.
Environmental research for rocket launch services sometimes take greater than a yr, so it is going to be a whereas earlier than any main building begins to convert SLC-37 for Starship launches. In this case, federal officers anticipate publishing a draft environmental influence assertion by December, then a remaining report by October 2025.
More instantly, ULA nonetheless has another Delta IV Heavy rocket to launch from SLC-37 in March with a categorized spy satellite tv for pc for the National Reconnaissance Office. Once that launch is full, ULA will wind down operations at SLC-37, and finally flip over the power again to the Space Force, which can search for a new tenant. For a number of months, trade sources have pointed to SpaceX because the main contender to take over SLC-37 after ULA is completed with the launch pad.
But that is not fairly a achieved deal but. Last yr, a senior official at ULA advised Ars on background that the corporate was additionally taken with sustaining a presence at SLC-37.
ULA’s new Vulcan rocket, which debuted final month and can change the Delta IV and Atlas V launch automobiles, makes use of a completely different launch pad a few miles up the coast from SLC-37. ULA is upgrading and increasing its floor services at Cape Canaveral to ramp up the Vulcan launch cadence, and the ULA official advised Ars the corporate might want to proceed utilizing a rocket processing hangar simply south of the Delta IV launch pad for storage and horizontal processing of Vulcan rockets.
Details are scarce about all the pieces SpaceX wants to do with SLC-37, however officers wrote on the environmental evaluation web site that SpaceX would “modify, reuse, or demolish the present SLC-37 infrastructure to help Starship-Super Heavy launch and touchdown operations.”
The historical past of SLC-37 dates again to the Nineteen Sixties, when NASA used the location for eight flights of the Saturn I and Saturn IB rockets to put together for the Apollo program. The facility sat dormant for 30 years till Boeing moved in to prepared SLC-37 for the Delta IV rocket, which has now flown 34 occasions from SLC-37. The launch pad at the moment consists of a 330-foot-tall (100-meter) cell gantry, a fastened erector, a fastened umbilical tower, and a flame trench for Delta IV missions.
Starship, the world’s largest rocket, wouldn’t want any of that that infrastructure, so if SpaceX takes over the pad, the power will seemingly endure in depth demolition and building.
If SpaceX is not cleared to use SLC-37, the corporate may construct a model new launch pad designated Space Launch Complex 50. If that is the trail SpaceX takes, SLC-50 could be constructed on undeveloped land north of SLC-37 and south of SpaceX’s major launch pad for the Falcon 9 rocket at Space Launch Complex 40.
Goodbye to LC-49, hey to SLC-37
SpaceX’s curiosity in establishing store at SLC-37 reveals the corporate is getting severe about creating a second base for Starship on Florida’s Space Coast. In 2022, SpaceX constructed a launch tower and launch mount for Starship at Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), situated at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. But the corporate made little progress there final yr as groups targeted on Starship check flights from South Texas.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, says Starship is the rocket that may make doable his dream of constructing a settlement on Mars. He has additionally touted Starship as a car for point-to-point journey on Earth. Both levels of Starship are designed to be absolutely and quickly reusable, with the Super Heavy booster and Starship higher stage returning to Earth for propulsive landings. Starship launch pads will double as touchdown pads.
Before any of these goals are realized, Starship wants to get into orbit. The first two full-scale Starship check flights final yr did not make it that far, however SpaceX acquired shut on the second launch in November. SpaceX hopes to obtain a near-orbital mission with the third Starship check launch, maybe as quickly as early March.
Eventually, Musk envisions Starship launching a number of occasions per day on a number of missions, carrying folks, satellites, cargo, or refueling tankers into orbit. In order to do that, SpaceX will want a lot of launch and touchdown pads. SpaceX has toyed with the concept of floating offshore launch and touchdown platforms, however these plans are on maintain.
In the near-term, SpaceX plans to construct a second Starship launch tower on the firm’s Starbase check web site in Cameron County, Texas. There’s additionally the partially-built launch tower at LC-39A, and now SpaceX has set its sights on SLC-37.
SpaceX was beforehand taking a look at constructing one other Starship launch pad from scratch on NASA property on the Kennedy Space Center. NASA environmental research for this location, generally known as Launch Complex 49, kicked off in 2021. Patti Bielling, a NASA spokesperson, advised Ars on Friday the company is not engaged on Launch Complex 49.
“At this time, there aren’t any actions involving LC-49 on Kennedy,” Bielling stated. “Any earlier actions concerning LC-49 have been suspended, and no actions have been taken.”
One of the primary operational purposes for Starship will likely be to function a human-rated lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program. SpaceX is creating a model of Starship to ferry astronauts to and from the Moon’s floor, however to ensure that Starship to attain the Moon, it has to be refueled in low-Earth orbit. This would require maybe 10 or extra refueling flights utilizing a model of Starship known as a tanker, all launching in a matter of weeks. Those tanker flights will launch on Super Heavy boosters from pads in Texas and Florida.
In parallel with continued Starship check flights and demonstrating in-space refueling know-how, SpaceX wants to construct extra launch pads to make all this doable. Although SpaceX has backpedaled on a number of of its Starship launch pad concepts, the corporate’s curiosity in SLC-37 suggests it nonetheless has huge plans for Starship in Florida.