Launch Complex 36 (LC-36)—formerly known as Space Launch Complex 36 (SLC-36) from 1997 to 2010—is a launch complex at

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the station ...

in Brevard County, Florida. It was used for

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic ...

launches by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

and the U.S. Air Force from 1962 until 2005.

Blue Origin Blue Origin, LLC is an American private spaceflight, privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Am ...

has leased the launch site since 2015 in order to build a new launch site for launching the company's orbital rockets. Orbital launches are expected to begin from LC-36 no earlier than Q4 2022, and the first launch vehicle slated to launch there is

New Glenn New Glenn is a heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle in development by Blue Origin. Named after NASA astronaut John Glenn, design work on the vehicle began in 2012. Illustrations of the vehicle, and the high-level specifications, were initial ...

, under development by Blue Origin since 2012. As of 2019, LC-36 is under major construction, including for a large launch pad for the launch vehicle with nearby Horizontal Integration Facility, lightning tower, water tower, and propellant tank farm for liquid methane and

liquid oxygen Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular oxygen. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an applica ...

. Historically, the complex consisted of two launch pads, SLC-36A and SLC-36B, and was the launch site for the

Pioneer Pioneer commonly refers to a settler who migrates to previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited land. In the United States pioneer commonly refers to an American pioneer, a person in American history who migrated west to join in settling and dev ...

Surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ca ...

, and Mariner probes in the 1960s and 1970s. There were a total of 145 launches from LC 36 during the period that the

US government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...

operated the launch complex in the first five decades of spaceflight. The Atlas rockets launched from Complex 36 were subsequently superseded by the

Atlas V Atlas V is an expendable launch system and the fifth major version in the Atlas (rocket family), Atlas launch vehicle family. It was originally designed by Lockheed Martin, now being operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture be ...

launch vehicle which launches from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral beginning in 2002.

History

LC-36 was originally constructed by the

in the early 1960s in order to launch the Atlas-Centaur rocket, with first launch in May 1962. LC-36A was the scene of the biggest on-pad explosion in Cape history when Atlas-Centaur AC-5 fell back onto the pad on March 2, 1965. The accident spurred NASA to complete work on LC-36B which had been abandoned when it was 90% finished. LC-36B was built near LC-36A "due to the Atlas-Centaur’s increasing flight rate – and low reliability early on." The pad was modified during the late 1980s to be able to launch the Atlas I, with first launch occurring in July 1990, and was subsequently modified two additional times during the 1990s to launch the Atlas II and

Atlas III The Atlas III (known as the Atlas II-AR (R for Russian) early in development ) was an American orbital launch vehicle, used in the years between 2000 and 2005. It was developed from the highly successful Atlas II rocket and shared many componen ...

launch vehicles. Atlas III made its sixth and final launch from LC-36 in 2005. There were a total of 68 and 77 launches from pads 36A and 36B, respectively, while the US government operated the launch complex in the first five decades of spaceflight.

Interregnum

The pad was unused from mid-2005 through 2015. The legacy Atlas-Centaur umbilical towers of both pads were demolished in 2006. The mobile service towers were both demolished in controlled explosions on June 16, 2007. Tower B was demolished at 13:59 GMT (09:59 EDT) and tower A followed twelve minutes later at 14:11 (10:11 EDT). In 2008, '' Aviation Week'' magazine reported that the U.S. Air Force committed to lease Launch Complex 36 to

Space Florida Space Florida is the aerospace economic development agency of the State of Florida. The agency was created by consolidating three existing state space entities into a single new organization via the Space Florida Act, enacted in May 2006 by the ...

for future use by the

Athena III Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of va ...

launch system, but that program never moved forward. In March 2010, the USAF 45th Space Wing issued real property licenses to Space Florida for Space Launch Complexes 36 and 46 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Moon Express leased the pad in February 2015 from Space Florida as a development and test site for its commercial lunar operations and its

lunar lander A lunar lander or Moon lander is a spacecraft designed to land on the surface of the Moon. As of 2021, the Apollo Lunar Module is the only lunar lander to have ever been used in human spaceflight, completing six lunar landings from 1969 to 19 ...

flight test vehicles. In 2015,

signed a long-term lease of launch site from

for launching Blue's orbital rockets, after Space Florida had previously leased the facility from the USAF in 2010 in order to facilitate commercial use of the land and facilities since the Air Force no longer required use of the launch complex. Moon Express and Blue Origin shared LC-36, delineated into LC-36A and LC-36B respectively, until Moon Express announced its relocation to Launch Complexes 17 and 18 in 2016, allowing Blue Origin full use of the LC-36 facility. In early 2016, Blue intended to begin orbital launches by 2020, as of 2019 they are expected to begin from LC-36 no earlier than 2023.

Blue Origin

On September 15, 2015,

announced it would use Launch Complex 36 for launches of its orbital launch vehicle later in the decade. Blue had the lease in place for Launch Complex 36 by late 2015 from the

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

state space agency,

, and will manufacture their new

BE-4 The Blue Engine 4 or BE-4 is an oxygen-rich liquefied-methane-fueled staged-combustion rocket engine under development by Blue Origin. The BE-4 is being developed with private and public funding. The engine has been designed to produce of thr ...

-powered orbital launch vehicle at the nearby

Exploration Park Exploration Park is a partnership formed in 2011 between NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Space Florida. There are 299 Acres on KSC property, but outside the NASA badge controlled area. As of March 2016, companies have the opportunity to lea ...

, also a part of the Space Florida land complex. By October 2015, the pad design and configuration was not yet publicly known. Blue

broke ground Groundbreaking, also known as cutting, sod-cutting, turning the first sod, or a sod-turning ceremony, is a traditional ceremony in many cultures that celebrates the first day of construction for a building or other project. Such ceremonies are o ...

for the facility to initiate construction activity on the site in June 2016. By March 2016, the first launch of the Blue orbital launch vehicle

was estimated to be no earlier than 2020 and that target date had not changed by the time high-level specifications for the new launcher were unveiled in September 2016, nor by the time construction of the launch site was well underway in September 2018. ''New Glenn'' will be a very large -diameter vehicle. The first stage will be powered by seven

methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Eart ...

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as wel ...

engines producing total

thrust Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that syst ...

at launch. The first stage will be reusable and is designed to land vertically. Blue has also leased the adjacent land—formerly known as LC-11—to use as a ground-based rocket engine test facility. Construction of the new launch complex and engine test facility was still underway in September 2018. Although Blue has been publicly quiet about the status of the launch complex construction, high-resolution aerial photography released after Hurricane Dorian in September 2019 showed that facility foundation work is in place—including for the horizontal integration facility, the launch service structure, lightning tower, and water tower—and above-ground steel construction has commenced. The

propellant A propellant (or propellent) is a mass that is expelled or expanded in such a way as to create a thrust or other motive force in accordance with Newton's third law of motion, and "propel" a vehicle, projectile, or fluid payload. In vehicles, the e ...

tank farm is in the process of being installed.

Gallery

File:Atlas III Centaur.jpg, An

launches from SLC-36B File:LC-36A Demolition.jpg, The MSS of Space Launch Complex 36A falls to the ground after critical supports are destroyed in a controlled explosion.

References

{{Blue Origin Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Launch complexes of the United States Space Force Rocket launch sites in the United States 1962 establishments in Florida

History

Interregnum

Blue Origin

Gallery

See also

References