SpaceX says preparations are going ‘super well’ for first Starship launch from Florida
A SpaceX official recently revealed that construction of a new launch pad in Florida for Starship is going “super well”, and we might see the giant rocket lift off from the new location in just a few months. The company is constructing three pads along Florida’s coast—two at Cape Canaveral and one at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. According to Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, the construction at KSC’s Pad 39A is nearly complete and testing of the infrastructure is underway.
"We've essentially done a lot of the initial build of the structures and the systems needed for launching Starship, and we're beginning to step into the sort of acceptance testing and operational testing prior to activation," Scheiman had said during a briefing on NASA’s Crew-13 mission last week, per Space.com. "So, we're kind of through the main construction and going into the proofing, testing — activation testing." SpaceX has a long-term lease with NASA to launch its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets from Pad 39A at KSC, which is now being expanded for the megarocket.
As of today, Starship has launched on 14 integrated test missions from Starbase, an unincorporated company town and launch facility established by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in Texas. Scheiman reportedly said that Starship will fly from Texas at least one more time before it also begins flying from Florida’s KSC. As the company looks to increase Starship’s launch cadence, it is vastly expanding infrastructure beyond Texas. Most recently, it even announced a plan to invest $100 billion in a new Starbase complex in Louisiana to achieve 30 Starship launches per day. Meanwhile, SpaceX has also made significant progress in constructing the pads at Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37A and SLC-37B at Cape Canaveral. "If you look towards Launch Complex 37, you can see the beginnings of that Starship tower," Scheiman said.
While preparations are in full swing today, the journey to securing construction approvals hasn’t been smooth for SpaceX. In 2024, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin wrote a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) demanding a cap on SpaceX’s goals of 44 Starship launches per year from the Kennedy Space Center. In the letter, Blue Origin cited environmental concerns and risk to wildlife, personnel, and the local community if something were to go wrong at the launch pad. United Launch Alliance (ULA) also delivered a scathing criticism underscoring the risk of debris to the populated areas in case of an accident. Both companies operate launch facilities in Florida under long-term leases, so they’re reasonably opposed to the idea of a 400-foot-tall rocket with millions of pounds of highly flammable propellant exploding on the pad.
Prior to Starship’s 14th test flight on September 28, Musk had said that Starship is just 2-3 years from hourly launches in order to achieve 30 launches per day by 2030. Chances are SpaceX might utilize multiple pads at once to launch the rockets, which are designed to launch astronauts to the Moon for NASA during the Artemis IV mission targeted for launch in 2028. Reports say Starship may launch on its 15th flight on October 19, followed by Flight 16 on October 30, although SpaceX is yet to confirm the dates.
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