From Delta to Starship, SpaceX’s ambitious plan for SLC-37’s future

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SpaceX’s Starship rocket is rapidly advancing through the much-needed paperwork to bring the massive rocket to the Florida Space Coast. While SpaceX is already preparing the hardware for it at the historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, it is also working to incorporate into the mix Space Launch Complex 37 located at the neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

On June 6, the Department of the Air Force released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Starship-Super Heavy launches from Space Launch Complex 37, unveiling the company’s ambitious plans for the upcoming Starship launch site.

Bringing Starship to Florida

SpaceX’s efforts to establish a presence for its Starship program in Florida date back to 2019. Different efforts were made at the time to set up a production of Starship vehicles at Cidco Road in Cocoa but those efforts were shelved in order to concentrate on producing the vehicles at Starbase in Texas. The only remaining work from that effort now is the Starship heatshield tile factory at the site, which provides the needed thermal protection system (TPS) material for the Starship upper stages. 

Teams had also been working at the time on setting up a Starship launch site within Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), but efforts were stopped in early 2020. Work resumed in 2022, and between that year and the next, SpaceX built an entire new Starship launch tower at LC-39A. This work stopped once again shortly before the debut flight of Starship in April 2023.

Aerial view of SpaceX’s Starship launch pad within Launch Complex 39A (Credit: Max Evans/NSF)

In early 2024, work resumed at LC-39A to apply to the ground infrastructure all the lessons learned since that first Starship launch. Environmental reviews for a modified launch infrastructure began at the time and are still continuing in coordination with NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This process is expected to be complete before the end of the year and the company is aiming for a first Starship launch from LC-39A shortly after.

In the meantime, SpaceX has also been working since early 2024 on a Starship Florida launch site at Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) located within the neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). In February 2024, the Department of the Air Force (DAF) released a Notice of Intent (NOI) indicating the department’s intention to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in order to study the environmental impacts of Starship launches from SLC-37.

This was followed by a scoping period between February and March of that year that kickstarted several environmental studies and interagency coordination that have lasted for about a year. On June 6 2025, the DAF released a Draft EIS, describing the results of these studies. According to the Draft EIS, the DAF believes the actions proposed for study won’t negatively impact the environment or the public. 

Description of the proposed project as presented by the DAF back in March 2024 (Credit: Department of the Air Force)

Following this Draft EIS, a 45-day long public comment period will open on June 13, during which the public will be able to leave their comments based on what’s presented in the Draft EIS. Three in-person meetings for public comment scoping will occur on July 8, July 9, and July 10, followed by a similar meeting online sometime between July 25 and July 28. 

Once the public comment scoping period ends, the comments will be evaluated, and any changes as a result of them will be incorporated into the final EIS for the project. That final EIS, along with a record of decision from the FAA, are expected to be released in the fall of 2025. 

Regulatory timeline for the SLC-37 EIS (Credit: Department of the Air Force)

SpaceX won’t have to wait until then as it already has a limited right of entry to the site. The company has worked for the last couple of months at the pad to prepare major structures for demolition in support of future construction. SpaceX would still need a separate launch license in order to be able to carry out Starship launches from SLC-37.

Launch infrastructure at SLC-37

The Draft EIS released last week discloses in more detail SpaceX’s plans to operate Starship from SLC-37 than what was known before. 

For example, the document states that the reason to set up a Starship launch site at SLC-37 is to support national security launches with Starship. This Draft EIS argues that while SpaceX has two Starship launch pads at Starbase, none of these are within a military base that could support these operations and the site is not well suited for the requested cadence of 76 launches per year. 

Map showing the extent of the project, including the roads to be modified and the lease boundary areas (Credit: Department of the Air Force)

Other sites like the one being built at LC-39A are closer to a military range but lack the capacity to support the launch cadence requested. SpaceX currently uses its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy family of rockets to carry out such missions under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) contract, but could offer Starship in future rounds of this program. 

The Air Force has already awarded a contract to SpaceX to study using the rocket for point-to-point cargo transportation. Therefore, SpaceX already has reasons to think a Starship launch site at a military spaceport will soon be needed. 

According to the schedules, the lease of the main launch site area at SLC-37 – that is, everything north of Patrol Road – would be granted to SpaceX after the record of decision is released later this year. The areas south of Patrol Road, which includes United Launch Alliance’s Horizontal Integration Facility, could be available for lease at the end of 2027.

SpaceX is planning to remove the majority of large legacy structures at the site, which includes the large Mobile Service Tower used in the past for the Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy rockets. The demolition of these structures is expected to begin this week, with clearing work planned for the remainder of the summer 2025. 

Proposed launch site layout to support Starship launches from SLC-37 (Credit: Department of the Air Force)

Under the current plans, SLC-37 would feature two Starship launch pads, each with a launch mount, launch integration tower, and flame trench. The two launch integration towers would be taller than the ones built until now, each being 600 feet (183 meters) tall compared to the approximate 470 feet (143 meters) for the two towers at Starbase and the one at LC-39A. 

The launch site would have a common propellant storage tank farm but separate deluge tank farms, an arrangement similar to the two launch pads present at SpaceX’s Starbase. 

Philips Parkway and Old A1A road would be widened to support the transport of Starship boosters and second stages to SLC-37. Additional turn radiuses are also expected to be added at key intersections to make the passage of large hardware easier and minimize traffic disruption. 

On top of the two launch integration towers, SpaceX is planning to build up to two potential catch towers in order to add flexibility and support the high cadence of operations from the site. 

Aerial view of the two launch sites at Starbase’s launch complex. SpaceX would replicate a similar dual setup at SLC-37 under the current plans with the addition of up two catch towers for added flexibility. (Credit: Jack Beyer/NSF)

This expected high cadence of operations will be met with several challenges, one of them being the supply of propellant to the launch site. SpaceX’s plans include building and installing a natural gas pretreatment system, a methane liquefier, and an air separation unit.

The natural gas pretreatment system would take natural gas supplied via pipeline and purify it to extract the methane needed to power Starship. Then, the methane liquefier would turn the methane gas into a liquid before sending it to the propellant storage tanks at SLC-37. 

On the other hand, the air separation unit would be used to separate oxygen and nitrogen from the air and turn them into liquids. These two gases are the most common gases in our atmosphere and between them they make up over 95 percent of dry air, making it trivial to capture them from the air and use them for launch site operations.

Liquid nitrogen is used at the launch site mainly for thermal conditioning and subcooling of Starship’s two cryogenic propellants. Liquid oxygen is used by Starship as its oxidizer to burn the liquid methane fuel. 

Starship Mission Operations

The concept of operations and the scope of the Draft EIS covers variants of Starship that haven’t flown yet or haven’t even been announced. The numbers used in the study for thrust, rocket height, propellant capacity, and more are well beyond the capabilities and properties presented recently by Elon Musk at a talk at the end of May. 

Starship, Super Heavy, and Raptor properties used for the EIS. Both vehicles more than surpass the capabilities and properties of the current vehicles and known proposed versions of Starship. (Credit: Department of the Air Force)

This likely reflects SpaceX’s desire to future-proof this study and cover under it all future variants of Starship that may be in the plans at the company. This way, if another future version is developed, this study won’t have to be repeated or modified as long as it fits within the figures mentioned within it. 

Under the plan studied by the DAF, launch operations would begin from SLC-37 in 2026, for which SpaceX would need an additional 450 full-time employees or contractors in order to support the planned activities.

Starship stages would initially be built at SpaceX’s production facility at Starbase in Texas. These would then be transported horizontally on barges to Florida ahead of their testing and launch at the site. These transports would only take place for the first few years with a peak of transport activity expected in 2027 and a tail off over the next five years. 

SpaceX is currently building its own Starship manufacturing facilities at the company’s Operations Complex located at Roberts Road within the KSC. A large integration building, nicknamed Giga Bay, is already under construction and will feature 24 work cells for vehicle integration as well as refurbishment.

Adjacent to the Giga Bay will be a factory similar to the one at Starbase, although it is expected to be approximately 50 percent larger based on the publicly available documentation of the Roberts Road site. While SpaceX has given a notional activation date for the Giga Bay of late 2026, it is unknown when such a factory may be built. 

Starbase’s own Starfactory facility took well over a year to be built and even to this day is still not fully operational. The location expected for the Florida Starfactory hasn’t even been cleared yet both in the physical sense and also in the paperwork sense as it still hasn’t passed the latest environmental assessments. 

Aerial view of SpaceX’s Operations Complex at Roberts Road. The company is currently installing the foundations for the Florida Giga Bay at the north side of the complex. (Credit: Anthony Iemole)

All of this combined lines up with the plans laid out on the Draft EIS of a peak transport activity expected in 2027 followed by a subsequent tail off in later years. 

Once the Starship stages are in Florida, the vehicles could carry out a series of pre-launch tests at the launch site. This includes tests like spin primes, static fire tests, and wet dress rehearsals.

The launch operations studied in the EIS only consider Starship trajectories ranging from 40 degrees to 115 degrees azimuth. This means that, unlike with Falcon 9, SpaceX is not seeking yet to use the Florida southern polar corridor with Starship.

Just like seen in Starship environmental assessments for other launch sites such as Starbase, SpaceX states that both stages would be able to return for a landing at the launch site, at an ocean platform, or be expended in the ocean after their flight is complete. 

Map with the many locations available for Starship to be expended if it were to be needed after it has completed its mission. (Credit: Department of the Air Force)

Apart from the sites already contemplated on the Tiered Environmental Assessment for Starship launches from Starbase, SpaceX has added an additional area in the Atlantic Ocean to expend Starship boosters and upper stages. 

SpaceX is proposing up to 76 launches per year from SLC-37, which would in turn result in 152 landings, 76 per stage. A maximum of 396 activities per year could be expected at SLC-37 when taking into account potential launch scrubs and tests of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage. 

SpaceX’s proposed Starship operations at LC-39A would include 44 launches and 88 landings per year, potentially bringing the combined sum of Starship-related activities in Florida to more than 600 per year. 

This increased activity at the space coast will have to be added on top of the activities planned by other operators such as Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance, Stoke Space, or Relativity Space. Despite these potential conflicts, the DAF states that the operations would have no significant impact on range management.

Launch sites with a high launch cadence like SLC-37 will be key to fulfill SpaceX’s goal of building a city on Mars and making life multiplanetary (Credit: SpaceX)

The large launch cadence planned for Starship in Florida contrasts with the maximum of 25 launches per year allowed at Starbase, Texas. Therefore, it is very likely that Florida will become a key location for SpaceX to carry out the many launches needed to support the missions under NASA’s Artemis program and the company’s own Mars ambitions.

A storied launch site

Built in the 1960s to support launches of the Saturn I and Saturn IB rockets, Space Launch Complex 37 is large enough to be able to support a large vehicle like Starship. Originally, the complex was planned to have two launch sites, SLC-37A and SLC-37B, but during its entire history, only SLC-37B was ever used. 

Between 1964 and 1968, SLC-37B saw six launches of the Saturn I and two launches of the Saturn IB. Most of these were test launches in support of the Apollo program, including testing of different technologies and hardware that would later be used for the Saturn V launches.

Launch of Apollo 5, the first launch of the Apollo Lunar Module and the last launch of a Saturn vehicle from SLC-37.

The site sat dormant for three decades until Boeing proposed to take over SLC-37 to launch its then-upcoming Delta IV family of rockets. The company was using at the time the neighboring Space Launch Complex 17 site to launch its Delta II and Delta III rockets  – but with a larger and more powerful rocket in development, a larger launch site was needed. 

Between 2002 and 2024 SLC-37B supported 24 launches of the Delta IV Medium and 11 launches of the Delta IV Heavy rockets. This included dozens of national security missions, the maiden launch of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, and the launch of the agency’s Parker Solar Probe.

After more than six decades since it was originally proposed, the plans to have two launch pads from this complex are back on the map. Much like what is already occurring at Space Launch Complex 40 with Falcon 9, SpaceX’s plans for SLC-37 with Starship will likely turn the storied site into a busy, 21st century launch complex with hundreds more missions to come.

Lead Image via NSF’s Jay DeShelter rendering.

The post From Delta to Starship, SpaceX’s ambitious plan for SLC-37’s future appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.



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