Elon Musk announced Friday that SpaceX has broke ground in Cape Canaveral, Florida in construction of its new Starship orbital launch pad.
The site will be located at Kennedy Space Center launch Complex 39, where the firm’s Falcon 9 rockets launch into space.
It is not clear how big the pad will be or when it will be finished – DailyMail.com has contacted Musk for more information.
Starship rockets are part of Musk’s master plan to send humans to Mars with the goal of colonizing the Red Planet – and Friday’s announcement means people could board the vehicles in Florida before heading to the Martian world.
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Elon Musk announced Friday that SpaceX has broke ground in Cape Canaveral, Florida in construction of its new Starship orbital launch pad
In February 2010, SpaceX’s first flight stack was set up at at Space Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral and March 9, 2010, SpaceX performed a static fire test, where the first stage was to be fired without taking off.
Then on December 21, 2015, SpaceX launched and landed a Falcon 9 first stage, following the rocket’s first trip to orbit.
SpaceX has since launched rockets from its Falcon 9 family 132 times, with 130 mission successes.
Cape Canaveral is the firm’s spot to launch Starlink satellites into orbit, along with cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station.
Starship rockets are part of Musk’s master plan to send humans to Mars with the goal of colonizing the Red Planet – and Friday’s announcement means people could board the vehicles in Florida before heading to the Martian world
And a Starship launch pad would bring all of Musk’s rockets to one place.
SpaceX said it previously started some construction on a Starship-specific launchpad at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, which SpaceX leases from the agency to launch its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, CNBC reports.
Concrete was been poured in 2019 to start the foundation, but no additional work has been done since.
But, since builders have poured concrete for the foundation of the Starship pad in late 2019, the location has largely remained dormant.
The site will be located at Kennedy Space Center launch Complex 39, where the firm’s Falcon 9 rockets launch into space
However, it seems the Starship pad might only be used once the company as perfected the vehicle – it has seen more prototypes explode than make soft landings.
All Starship flights currently take off from SpaceX’s Starbase testing facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
Space Florida’s Vice President Government & External Relations Dale Ketchum said SpaceX had always considered Florida to be a key operations site for Starship.
‘As the program has evolved SpaceX chose to focus initially on Boca Chica in Texas, but that was understandable and now the program is again turning its attention to the Cape,’ Ketchum said.
‘SpaceX will choose where they launch different missions based upon profitability, as they should. But we are excited that Florida will compete and win for many of those launches to the moon, Mars, or for money.’
