SpaceX has been given a major boost for its Starship operations at Cape Canaveral in Florida after the Department of the Air Force (DAF) gave the green light for the company to develop the Space Launch Complex-37 (SLC-37) launch facility.
Preparatory construction work at the site began earlier this year, but the nod from DAF means SpaceX can now move onto the serious work of building a launchpad for its mighty Starship rocket.
The green light comes after a thorough environmental review focusing on the impact of Starship launches on nearby wildlife that also included a safety analysis.
SpaceX is developing multiple Starship launch facilities on Florida’s Space Coast, including a pad at Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A), where building work has also started. The goal is to conduct as many as 76 Starship launches per year from SLC-37, and up to 44 launches annually from LC-39A, with the first full roster of launches starting next year or 2027, depending on regulatory approvals and infrastructure readiness.
SpaceX also wants to repurpose Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) for Starship flights. The site is currently used mainly for launches of the Falcon 9, SpaceX’s workhorse rocket.
“With three launch pads in Florida, Starship will be ready to support America’s national security and Artemis goals as the world’s premiere spaceport continues to evolve to enable airport-like operations,” SpaceX said in a post on X, referring to its ambition to have fast turnaround times for the reflight of its reusable rockets.
Up to now, SpaceX has conducted all 11 of its Starship launches from its Starbase facility in southern Texas. It’s currently building a new launchpad for its next-gen Starship rocket and will also rebuild the original pad, giving it five Starship launchpads across two states.
When fully operational, the Starship, which is the most powerful rocket ever to fly, will be used for crew and cargo missions to the moon, and possibly to Mars, too, though there’s still much work to be done to get the rocket ready.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.