SpaceX Begins Building Starship Launch Complex at NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A
The launch complex in Florida will supplement the one being built at SpaceX’s facility at Boca Chica, Texas.
NASA issued a statement about the project.
NASA signed a property agreement with SpaceX in 2014 which allows them to develop Space Launch Complex 39A to serve as a platform for the company’s commercial launch activities.
It’s within the rights of their lease agreement to make launch infrastructure improvements within the boundaries of the pad.
In 2019, NASA conducted an environmental assessment and granted permission for SpaceX to begin construction within the pad perimeter. Approval is only to build at this time. Launchings and landings will involve another approval process.
82 responses to “SpaceX Begins Building Starship Launch Complex at NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Awesome! Go SpaceX…Go NASA!
yes build two of something launcher specific before you have flown 1 of anything nice
It’s more than a Starship pad KSC, for which there’s an EA. There are also 2 pads in the Draft EA for Starbase.
it also provides hope for the fan boys at a time when morale is low
Not as low as the Starliner team ?
Actually, the Raptor issue is more about engine production, their desired Starlink Gen 2 flight rate, and if reusability is live by then. Musk stated their biggest financial risk is the fools in DC driving the economy into the ditch.
The economy going in a ditch at some point is driving a lot of business decisions right now. It’s been quite some time since DC has had reasonable spending. At some point the butchers bill will come due. It’s a question of when and how that bill is presented. If SpaceX can move fast enough to be past the financial danger zone before bad happens, the company could be in the spaceflight drivers seat for decades. If not, it could get ugly for them.
Compounded by the uncertainty of when things happen. Several companies locally got caught out in the recession and had major investments come online about the time the bottom dropped out.
You know, I’ve been hearing comments exactly like this (almost verbatum) since at least the 1980s. Hasn’t happened yet, at least not as badly as always predicted. Its been said so often, and failed to come true, it’s starting to take on the status of claims of an imminent second coming.
Government finances don’t work like personal or even business finances.
Correct. Especially when you have a money printing machine.
And are not afraid of using it to inflate your way out of debt.
You can claim it to be anyones’ fault you like. The bottom did drop out in 2007-2009 for many of us. A lot of businesses ended up with major assets sitting idle. Many of us lost assets either fast sale or foreclosure. It doesn’t have to be the apocalypse to destroy or bankrupt a company.
Edit an hour later. If Elon is concerned about a twist in the economy hitting his companies hard, then the urgency on the Raptor replacement makes a lot more sense. My original thought was that finding serious problems this far in OR artificially inventing a crisis for team motivation was horrible either way. If he sees something on the horizon that could hit electric cars, solar panel demand, batteries, or LEO constellations hard, then he might see a legitimate time limit on getting Starship, Starlink, and associated businesses operational before it hits. My crystal ball has never functioned. Elon might think his shows danger ahead.
the sad thing is that the folks who had those issues, are generally not the ones that caused them. we bailed htose people out
Yes indeed, 2008 -> 2010 was a bad time. But it was a recession, not a depression. Nothing like what happened from ’29 -> ’40 or so. What I’m talking about are the predictions I’ve been hearing since the ’80s of an apocalyptic depression.
I think I see where we were talking past each other a bit. Many doom and gloomers among the business people locally. Pessimism is driving many of the investment decisions, or lack thereof. There will be a correction, vector and magnitude unknown. Not asking for agreement here. People seeing what happened in the recession are being cautious seeing the mismanagement from DC. And it is bipartisan such that party blaming isn’t addressing the real problems..
Agreed.
deficit spending is a gift from the GOP and REagan years. only Clinton managed to avoid it strange
Actually it started with Herbert Hoover in the Depression, paused for a while under Truman, Eisenhower, and Nixon, before taking off again with Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden just continuing the tradition after the Clinton Administration. From the St. Louis Federal reserve Bank.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org…
so did President Trump who was the biggest spender this century after bush43
Look I dont mind deficits. but the problem so far, and Biden might or might not change that. is that the deficits have all been for bad things
in retrospect, it would have been better to let The Banks collapse in 07 or left Saddam in power or stayed out of Afland or…….
I think the building of bridges will be useful
911 indeed did stampede the Bush Administration into a number of bad decisions.
just one bad one after another
the economy will tank if we cannot stop the virus. there is a vaccine.
Yes, but there is some evidence that Omicron may be the mutation that starts to make it less deadly, much like the last suspected Coronavirus, the 1889-1890 Flu, is believed to have mutated into one of common cold viruses. But time will time. Hopefully the vaccine will be here tomorrow for my booster shot.
the vaccines are working really well for me. I have been at, at least four events that in the view of my employeers ended up being a mass spread event…among the folks who were not vaccinated. no one at the evnts that was vaccinated caught the thing. sheww…
Yes, it is really a numbers game. A vaccines lowers the probably by 80-90 percent on the average. A good N95 mask takes that down by another 90 percent or so if worn properly. I further reduce my exposure by avoiding crowds and shopping curbside reducing the number of encounters with it.
and if most of the country did that we would be well ahead.
Personal responsibility, bottom line on risk. You have it, many don’t. One problem is the mandates etc assuming we are all children.
Good to hear, but still be careful. Here, ~25% of those in the hospital are vaccinated.
It is panicky and nonsensical lockdowns, mask, vax and social distancing
mandates that are killing the economy – along with all the usual
left-wing progressive nonsense. The Democrats have waxed and grown fat
on the Covid Reich and wish to see it continue forever – witness the
permanent indoor mask mandate now being proposed in OR. Red states
without all this idiocy, such as TX and FL, are attracting Covid Reich
refugees in large numbers including businesses.
There are, of course, several vaccines, courtesy of Donald Trump. There could have been additional vaccines to deal with the Delta variant by this time, but the Biden Residency has not seen fit to follow Trump’s instructive example. Delta, in any case, proved far less dangerous than the original Alpha strain. Omicron is now the boogeyman du jour but no deaths seem to be attributable to it thus far. More and more gratuitous tryanny is being imposed in the face of less and less actual threat.
if you say so, but I doubt it. and based on your analysis of his comment about the economy I really doubt it 🙂
all you have to do (and I dont do this much but its a fun thing) is watch them play “change aa Raptor” down at BC to see that they are having problems getting ones that work, and these are supposdly engines that have been fired
everything about this effort screams mass issues…and my guess is that the Raptor either is not reusable all tha well or well simply does not work. they left the boilerplate test with not a single flight where the entire raptor stack worked well
My morale’s just fine, thanks.
It would have been more interesting if they had decided to build this at the site of the never-developed Pad 39C. However, I’m guessing it would have taken a new EIS / EA for that to happen, which would likely have delayed it by years.
Yes, it would along with a agreement with NASA.
Cool!
Would seem better to at least test out the ground infrastructure for launch in Boca Chica first, but apparently they feel confident that they have things moving in the right direction.
The other aspect could be that they are simply working on having a Plan B in hand for that testing in the case that the Boca site gets restricted and/or delayed due to environmental impact concerns.
Of course, ultimately they have been planning on having multiple Starship/SH launch sites all along, including at Pad 39A where they had already started work on a Starship launch pad earlier (back when they were working on building the first starship sections in Florida and Texas simultaneously)
its part of Elon’s brilliance 🙂
If it works, then yes 😀
If not, “iterative development”
the spaceX story to me a complete outsider is a fascinating one. my 27 year old and I were were talking about it the other day (she is thinking of next career steps) but I think her line was pretty good “someday someone is going to write a good book on the company and it will be interesting to see which direction the book reports the story on”
up through the Falcon era Musk has had a company where the technology he has used is a “fairly conventional design” that evolved into a fairly innovatively used design…was something that aviation did in its hey day
it still is unclear to me that Falcon series are making money and are all that much more “economic” then standard high performance rockets. I hear the claims but its just unclear to me that they are more then that
However Flacon has over the decade plus doubtless and without reservation matured into a fairly reliable and useful vehicle. someone ought to be making money with it. 🙂
the entire campaign to make the Falcon first stage reusable/furishable whatever you want to call it was to me impressive. little things like “OK we can pull the fairings out of the water no big deal” bespeaks of solid engineering cycles.
get right down to it DRagon is impressive but really it is a fairly (and I mean this with all kudos’) modest technological leap used very innovatively
Starship is to me just a leap into the Abyss. and so far the leap seems to be going more sidways then it is forward. amazing to me that they left the boilerplate testing with never really a solid success.
all the (few) ones that didnt end in RUDS were near failures and in not a single one of them as best I can recall did they get a solid engine performance…and the more we find out about the engine the less everyone seems to like it
I hope aand wish them success…and even I got affected for aa bit of “Muskitis” …I suspect at some point they will iterate to something that woks.
we will see…and i nfive years we might be building giant statues to Elon at BC so that one day future space travelers can see where it all started…but well lets see
It wasn’t mentioned much on the media or blogs, but the last launch of a Falcon 9 was the 133 launch of a Falcon 9, the 101st in a row without a failure surpassing the Atlas V as the most reliable launcher and the 9th flight for that specific booster, an impressive record, especially given the rocky start of the Merlin engine.
In terms of reading, “Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX” by Eric Burger is a good book on the Falcon 1 and for understanding the foundation of the Falcon’s success having made extensive use of interviews with those who were there including Elon Musk.
“Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future” by Ashlee Vance based on interviews with Elon Musk he did a few years ago. It is a very good work on his childhood and what started him on the road to building the future.
Good morning Tom
if that comparison with Atlas makes you happy great. statistically its meaningless as are all comparisons driven over different metrics. I see where you are driving at and one can draw that conclusion (as reliability is in metrics of course) but its far to say that both Atlas and Falcon9 are very reliable boosters
and very different ones. they are both designed for different “things” and missions and with different philosophies…but these comparisons seem to maake people happy
I’ve read Eric’s book and its a good start. History is written in several layers all with a different set of perspectives… in my view we are simply not far enough along the hunt right now to see whose panned out
as I hinted at in my op ed on the subject …MUsk and his rocket development put spaceflight in a different dimension; one at least for humans that has yet to pan out.
Musk envisions a world where humans operate routinely in space. And I use to envision that as well oh 30 years ago (and have the op eds and storylines to prove it) but that view has faded as its come up against the harsh realities of space (not so much theh rocket equation)
Musk’s views at least the ones his fan boys reveal in, is that if cost are very low then humans will burst out into space and just bend it to their will.
My take on this is that thats a fools dream (as evidenced by Alaska) …and it has little to do with the rocket equation. but more about the realities of what space is like and the LACK of a product anywhere that requires human intervention but yet has value in the “normal world”
I could be completely wrong here and there might be technological breakthroughs that will make energy management so cheap that its doable (star trek) but I dont see it in the next 100 or so years (I Know when first contact in theory was…but I also watched 2001 🙂
we will see. of greater issue to Musk is right now he seems to be having technology troubles of his on. lets see what this year brinds
what Isee with rocket labs is a firmer fix on the economy of space flight. but again its see what the future brings
Clearly Mars 24 is out for Musk fly safe
It has been for a while and he is now focusing on the Moon with his tweets with Mars being later in the decade. I personally think it won’t be Starship 1.0, but Starship 2.0 that goes to Mars as he works up the experience curve of rocket building. Not well reported, but he is also running into the same heat shield tile problems that the Shuttle Orbiter had and it’s his next barrier to battle with after the Raptor issues.
Tom. he will be lucky if its starship 5 or so that makes LEO work for him. or put another way at the rate he is going he will be lucky if he gets passed the failures of 2 or 3 and goes on to 5.
Long before he gets to Mars or the Moon he is going to have to find something that pays he bills for STarship development…as its going to be to expensive for him to pay. because his wealth is not real money its stock, and the more he sells of it, the value drops
he has had a very expensive misstep with the Raptor. I dont know if its him, the talent he hired to manage the thing or that just like the SSME its not possible right now to develop an engine like that which is reusable and reliable…but as you point out there is more excitment to come
Like you wrote a little earlier:
“History is written in several layers all with a different set of perspectives… in my view we are simply not far enough along the hunt right now to see whose panned out”
It’s a bit premature to pronounce Raptor to be “a very expensive misstep”.
Elon seems to think it is. he is already starting to move to a new engine
a guess is that they had a reasonably good engine that they “upgraded” into the failure zone. but I am curious to see if they can “out power” the rocket equation.
The current problems with Raptor are production-related far more than function-related. Function has been improved right along and will continue to be, as was the case with Merlin. Today’s Merlin is now better than 2.5 times more powerful than it’s earliest implementation. Raptor will have a growth of capability over time too. But, in the meantime, what is in-hand now is good enough for what must soon be done, it just needs to be built at a considerably faster rate in Hawthorne until the McGregor plant comes on-line. There is no need to try cheating the rocket equation, which isn’t possible in any case.
not sure I agree with that but see how it turns out…they are not cheating but out innovating 🙂 the rocket equation or trying to. so is Rocket Labs…hope you are well
All SpaceX needs for sure is a working 1st stage and if push comes to shove he can create a disposable 2nd stage to get the starlinks into orbit. The plan has always been to use starlink to fund final development of the mars version of starship and the mars colony.
Also the Starship HLS avoids a lot of the starship issues allowing spacex access to luna in the near term.
agreed. I am kind of surprised they did not go down that route first…
Starship will allow full deployment of Starlink and Starlink will pay for Starship.
It will certainly come as a great shock to all the world’s richest billionaires that stock is not “real money.” It will also come as a great shock to everyone who has a 401K plan.
“if cost are very low then humans will burst out into space and just bend it to their will.”
Luna is a 9 BILLION acre unclaimed asset waiting to go on the books of corporations. It is not a question of if it will happen .. just a question of when.
could not agree more and well said
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Mercury or that “icarus fellow”? in any event what a wing design. variable camber/chord wing 🙂 with maybe sensors to deal with shock wave creep 🙂
I use to wonder in my 20’s if I would have the ummph to go to space as a colonist since you know we were going to do that with the station/shuttle…
but I guess that the closest I will come to knowing is my life in the USN and several overseas private venture forays where it more or less all worked out for me
the interesting thing abotu being back in Seattle is that the “question” that is on the mind of some of the 20 somethings of my friends…(my oldest doesnt consider it …much) is “would they go to Alaska to make their fortune”
its hard for me to imagine we will go another 20-30 eyars in human spce flight and not see a single solitary thing that humans do which is worth the cost to keep them in space…but we sure have gone all ofmy life (over half a century) with that. it seems to keep escaping us
fly safe
For “it” to “keep escaping us” would require that “it” have been actively pursued at some point during the last 40 years. That didn’t happen until quite recently, though. Actual, serious pursuit has barely begun. For most of the last four decades, we have been Rip Van Winkle, asleep under his tree.
The cost of keeping them in space for most of your life was not a real factor to the government. But as we witness prices coming down the cost to keep more people in space doing more things in space, will get us to that EUREKA moment a lot faster.
Right – SpaceX was founded largely because Musk found the cost of the rockets that were available at the time to be unfathomable (within the context of, “Ah ha. This is why we haven’t done anything in space. Doing anything is too ridiculously expensive.”). He figured that rockets are basically aluminum tubes with fuel and oxidizer tanks, fuel, oxidizer, plumbing, pumps, a combustion chamber and a nozzle for the flaming bits shoot out of. He added up the costs of the raw materials involved and found they were relatively very low, then started meeting with rocket engineers and asking how and where the costs came in.
Musk once said something to the effect of that you could give ULA the blueprints to the Falcon 9 and they couldn’t build it and launch them for less than $200 million (I forget the number).
As you said, the Falcon and Dragon aren’t really anything so new technology-wise. They’re very good, and each is an advancement, but they’re in no way revolutionary. Landing orbital class boosters is certainly a standout achievement, but the shuttle was already reused, and more importantly, the Falcon 9 was already upending the industry before booster reuse was established. Musk’s innovation was on the business side. The engineering was solid, but bringing a Silicon Valley start-up mentality (including finance) to the rocket business was revolutionary.
Starship, however, is a technological leap into the unknown. Meanwhile, the business case isn’t as clear either
nothing really to disagree with (I know that is sad) here. I am very hopeful it works out. we need something to get the world off dead center in human space in particular.
I suspect the cost of access is an issue
Re: “nothing really to disagree with”
Well, there’s always next time! 😀
Ya .. Musk said at that time the average cost of materials in manufacturing usually equaled about 50% of the price but with rockets the materials were on average 3%. It was then he knew there was a huge margin to work with and decided to build his own.
I have always thought Starship as the first New Space rocket. Falcon is an advanced old space design that Boeing could have had—if they wanted to.
“it still is unclear to me that Falcon series are making money “
It was my understanding from past statements from Musk the 1st and 2nd stages of the F9 cost 26 million. At 50 million it is making money. After one launch the 1st stage is paid for and refurbish costs 2 million making each launch after the first somewhere in the ballpark of 14 – 16 million. So there is profit. Also the Crew dragon gets a lot more than 50 mil and any other NASA/ DOD launch. But half the launches are starlink and those flights are burning capital.
You can’t just count the raw costs of the stages. In order to know if he is making money, you have to amortize the development costs not only for the rocket but also the pads and infrastructure, and count the operations costs. Those costs are non-trivial.
Well the FAA did limit them to 12 (or close to) orbital launches from the Boca next year, I can’t see them changing it much so it makes total sense to have another pad.
The initial numbers of missions flown from Boca Chica will increase as experience with actual launches shows no show-stopper ill effects. That said, SpaceX will need multiple launch/landing facilities by mid-decade. So KSC will get one, Starbase will get a second one and then there will be the two converted oil platforms plus an open-ended number of others like them.
This is why I want Space Force to get much better funding, with it going to Starship/SuperHeavy as it is a national asset…so it doesn’t die and Musk won’t go broke.
But how does the Starship get from the factory in Texas to the launch pad in Florida?
At first I thought, oh SpaceX will just barge it by sea, Saturn V style, since the port of Brownsville is so close by. But when I look at a map of the area I don’t see how SpaceX could trundle a Super Heavy down the road to even reach the port! It would be a nightmare.
Uh, so does that mean SpaceX will have to fly Starships out of Texas with a suborbital hop to Florida? That seems improbable. Jeez, maybe a local hop to an offshore landing pad, which offloads onto a barge?
Other than that, SpaceX will have to build a new Starship factory in Florida next to the launch pad, or dredge out a landing dock next to the factory in Texas. So, I suppose SpaceX will build another factory? They probably need the expanded build capacity anyway.
This is one of those industrial situations where a giant airship would be awfully useful, even if it only skycraned an empty Starship to a nearby barge. That’s a fundamental problem with very large launch vehicles, the logistics of moving them around on the ground from the factory to the launch pad.
$L$ delenda est
There is suppose to be a new road under construction by the county that goes direct to the Port of Brownsville which will work.
Alternatively he could buy a surplus LST (a quick check shows a number of modern commercial ones for sale cheap) and just take it over the beach, Marine style!?
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
No LST ever made could accommodate a Super Heavy. It’s just too long and too wide. Even then, you still would need to build a new road down to the beach.
As for Brownsville, you just have to look at detailed map to see there is no easy route from the Factory to the port. It’s a very messy tangled coastal region. In theory it could be done. But it would be easier to just build another factory in Florida.
$L$ delenda est
The road already goes on to the beach. A few steel planks like the one used by combat engineers for air fields would close the short gap to an LST. It wouldn’t be going to Florida on the LST, just far enough offshore to transfer to a heavy lift vessel. So it could stand upright for the short journey, with the attached Raptors, or weights, keeping the center of gravity low for the short journey to transfer it.
Take a look at Birmingport
ISTM a new rocket factory at KSC, likely at the SpaceX Operations Area on Roberts Rd.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Third stage of Saturn V using the Super Guppy air transport. It was only 13 metric tons empty, and only about 6.6 meters in diameter.
$L$ delenda est
This is more like what Super Heavy would need to get to Florida.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
In 2017, NASA refurbished the Saturn V barge channel and turning basin right next to the KSC VAB so they can barge the SLS core stage to KSC.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/turn-basin-prepped-for-space-launch-system-core-stage-arrivalIt would be a no-brainer for SpaceX to utilize that infrastructure already in place, yep.
Down in Brownsville they built the port connector road to connect TX4 to the port and ensured no overhead power lines are in the way. So it should be relatively easy for SpaceX to ship a Starship or SH booster to KSC by barge.
Down in Brownsville they built the port connector road to connect TX4 to the port and ensured no overhead power lines are in the way.
Do you have any link or such? When I look at the map of the region, I don’t see any plausible road path from Star Base to the port. Help me out.
Page 11 on this project report has a nice map of the Brownsville South Port Connector highway which should be completed in the next few months (construction started in August 2020):
https://ccrma.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/CCRMA-Project-Status-Report-2017_Final.pdfThe entire route from the SpaceX Boca Chica production site to the south side of the Brownsville Port channel will be able to accommodate the SPMTs carrying a Starship or SH booster, since SpaceX paid to have the power lines buried along the whole way.
July 2021 update video from the Port of Brownsville:
https://youtu.be/ypbSQ7oW9JcI wish Musk would come to Birmingham. Central Alabama has a port of call called Birmingport that is little used. G&G steel made the SLS pathfinder out of steel and floated it out there. We have huge cranes far from the coast.
what I find interesting in all this…is that RocketLabs might end up being the spoiler that BO was hoping to be.
I notice that the fan boys on NASAspaceflight.com which has become nothing but spaceX all the time…are attacking the RL design …
all the while pretty well sliding by the problems that raptor is having (wow another build site for cameras to watch and keep us excited)
IF and it is a BIG IF Rocketlabs makes the new rocket work. it will be the first real advance in rocketry in over 50 years. with a very innovative design system and reuse will likely be quite easy (if it works0
with a very low pad footprint.
On the other hand Starship is driving to one of the most complex pad systems in the world…with engines that are running flat out ..and a design that seems pretty heavy
I still think that they will come up with something useable. but this seems to all be going sidewayrs right now
(OK cue the 60 foot statue of Elon) fly safe
Blue Origin has never had the single-minded dedication to minimizing costs that SpaceX has had since its inception and which Rocket Lab also shares. So Blue Origin has lacked the necessities to be any sort of “spoiler” to SpaceX from the get-go.
Will Rocket Lab knock off SpaceX with Neutron? No. Could it knock off Blue Origin? Entirely possible. Peter Beck is a penny-pincher very much in the Elon Musk mold.
Neutron is not “the first real advance in rocketry in 50 years.” That would be Falcon 9. The second such – after a much shorter interval – is Starship.
But Neutron is a very clever design and may prove to have better operating economics than Falcon 9. It is being designed to use cheaper propellant, to operate from simpler launch infrastructure and to dispense with at-sea recovery operations entirely. Overall, Neutron’s operational economics anent those of Falcon 9 will depend upon how much its structure and engines cost to build, per unit, including its expendable 2nd stage, and how much it costs and how long it takes to turn around between missions. Early indications are that Falcon 9 may finally have some worthy non-SpaceX price competition by 2024 for the most common sorts of missions being flown by then.
With Relativity Space’s completely reusable Terran-R also slated to debut by 2024, at least one thing seems certain – the Europeans and Russians are going to have a lot more than just SpaceX to whinge about.
I think Neutron is more of an R-7 killer, like how Falcon Heavy was a Delta IV killer.
we can agree or not on the first three graphs but I think the fourth one hit it on the head and to me at least is fairly “non biased” and fairly equitable
in my view Neutron’s success or not depends completely on what happens with second stage return and reuse…of Starship. and the economics of it
If it flounders and they can make Neutron work. he has a winner. I think it is a shorter lift from Neutron then it is for Starship but we will see which one happens.
NSF is shrill. They banned me and kept that I’ll tempered Jim.
I left about oh 5 years ago or something. they were in the process of becoming what they are now I spaceX groupie column. no idea is better then SpaceX’s and no SpaceX idea is bad.
I think that Neutron is a “killer” if second stage reuse by return proves impossible
Looks like the investors still have faith in SpaceX….
https://www.swfinstitute.or…
Oman Investment Authority Takes a Stake in SpaceX
Posted on 12/05/2021
It also very important to recognize that as soon as the SLS is junked Pad39B will be freed up and could easily become a second launch pad for the Starship/Super Heavy.
Saw that and they didn’t disclose the amount. I would imagine at least 1 billion.