SpaceX at Cape Canaveral

[JB47394]

ULA's lease on SLC 37 is up next year and SpaceX would like to take it over for Starship Heavy launches. If it happens, that would mean four towers. Two at Starbase, Texas and two at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

SpaceX wants to take over a Florida launch pad from rival ULA

SpaceX now plans at least four Starship launch pads: Two in Texas and two in Florida.

arstechnica.com

If SpaceX isn't cleared to use SLC-37, the company could build a brand new launch pad designated Space Launch Complex 50. If this is the path SpaceX takes, SLC-50 would be built on undeveloped land north of SLC-37 and south of SpaceX's primary launch pad for the Falcon 9 rocket at Space Launch Complex 40.

 

[scaesare]

"Slick Fifty" has a cool ring to it as well.

 

[ecarfan]

Also from the article:

But that's not quite a done deal yet. Last year, a senior official at ULA told Ars on background that the company was also interested in maintaining a presence at SLC-37. ULA's new Vulcan rocket, which debuted last month and will replace the Delta IV and Atlas V launch vehicles, uses a different launch pad a few miles up the coast from SLC-37. ULA is upgrading and expanding its ground facilities at Cape Canaveral to ramp up the Vulcan launch cadence, and the ULA official told Ars the company may want to continue using a rocket processing hangar just south of the Delta IV launch pad for storage and horizontal processing of Vulcan rockets.

 

[JB47394]

The orbital launch mount at Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) has had all four legs taken down. It looks like they cut them off at the ground and pushed them over. I wonder if they're going to start over there so they can put in a deluge system - or a flame trench - without any complications from the launch mount structure.

Edit: And, courtesy of NSF, here's an image showing a flame diverter that was under construction by SpaceX at LC-39A back in 2019. Work stopped on it a year later.