This week SpaceX hoisted up and attached a new crew access arm at the company’s SLC-40 pad. The addition of a second crew tower gives SpaceX the flexibility to launching at either of their East Coast launch sites.
SLC-40 gets last piece to crew launch tower
On Monday, NASASpaceFlight’s Max Evans caught SpaceX hoisting its crew access arm to the top of the tower at SLC-40. This now gives SpaceX complete redundancy in launch pads for crewed flights to the ISS as it serves as the only option at the moment.
Over the last year we’ve watch SpaceX build up and improve SLC-40 to both handle more launches and now crewed and uncrewed Dragon flights from the pad. Since SpaceX’s Dragon 2 spacecraft began flying it has only flown from LC-39A. SpaceX has only launched its crew from that launch site as well.
The tower is similar to what SpaceX has built for its Starship rocket both at Starbase and at LC-39A, although there’s a lot more going on inside of it. The crew access tower at LC-39A is actually left over from the Space Shuttle days and was known back then as the fixed service structure. SLC-40’s is brand new and of SpaceX’s design.
The tower was built in segments at SpaceX’s Roberts Road facility on Kennedy Space Center. Then each segment was transported over to SLC-40 and assembled with a crane. The crew access arm, which is similar in almost every way to LC-39A’s, was assembled somewhere else, most likely at one of SpaceX’s hangers over on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
SLC-40 has a long history of launching rockets. Beginning its life as a site for Titan III rockets in the 1960s. It has now become the most active launch pad in the world, launching the bulk of SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets this year.
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First SLC-40 crewed flight when?
SpaceX has been launching one Falcon 9 rocket every three to four days from one of its launch pads in the US. 46 of SpaceX’s 81 launches have been from SLC-40 alone, meaning the pad is pretty busy all year round.
LC-39A, SpaceX’s second East Coast launch site, has been mostly reserved to Falcon Heavy missions, ISS resupply flights, and crewed flights for both NASA and commercial partners. Flights like these take much longer to get ready and prepped than your standard run of the mill Falcon 9. Fitting in one of these flights might be difficult if the company plans on launching so regularly.
SpaceX has also built up LC-39A to house facilities needed for crewed flight. One of the buildings near by houses the company’s own suit up room used for Axiom and other future commercial flights. NASA uses its historic crew quarters deeper in the center for its astronauts to suit up.
Axiom-3 is coming up in January and just because SpaceX can, might be SLC-40’s first crewed flight. SpaceX could also just use SLC-40 as a backup site if LC-39A isn’t an option for whatever reason.
A third option could be that SpaceX plans to balance out the use of its two pads, rotating flights back and forth. What ever the plan may be, it’s exciting to see more towers pop up along the Space Coast Sky Line.
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