Wil on Pushdup

Starship's Florida Launch Pads Are Months From Their First Flight

SpaceX is closing in on its first Starship launch from Florida. Work at LC-39A, the Gigabay at Roberts Road, and the new SLC-37A pad all moved forward through the first half of 2026, and one of these pads is now only months from operational. Foundation work on the Gigabay started around March 2025. As of July 2026 the structural steel is done and the cladding and roof are nearly finished. Both smaller doors are installed. Work continues on the two large doors that completed vehicles will roll out through. The penthouse level, the last floor below the roof, doesn't cover the full footprint. Some sections stay open so workers can look down into the aisles at the vehicles below. What goes up there isn't confirmed. An updated launch control is one possibility, since the east-side view takes in every launch pad. Work stands for the Gigabay are starting to go up next to Hangar X-2. The design differs from the stands in Mega Bay 1 and Mega Bay 2 at Starbase. The possible booster work stand has six arms instead of the 10 on Mega Bay 1's. There's also a possible jig under a tent that could help break boosters over from horizontal to vertical and back. Starbase has a pair of these at the far end. Pad hardware is coming together on Roberts Road too. Construction on the SLC-37A launch mount has begun, with all eight first-level pieces in place. This build has been done twice before and has taken crews about six months each time before rollout to the pad. At least three of the four top-deck deluge sections are on site, along with two of the manifolds that feed water to the top deck. Valve skids and chopstick carriage arms are sitting around the area. These could go to the LOX side of LC-39A or to SLC-37 once construction reaches that point. Two new buildings are also going up: one is Hangar X-3, the other has no name yet. Their use is unknown, possibly warehouses or fabrication space. Work on LC-39A resumed in February 2025, and the pad is likely a few months from operational. The pace has tracked Pad 2 at Starbase. The tower and chopsticks were already standing when work restarted, but both were empty shells. The clearest sign the pad is close: ridge cap and bucket deluge testing has started. Only a few tests so far, but it's the right signal, since SpaceX needs to dial in a setup that differs from Pad 2. LC-39A carries extra gas generators on each water deluge subsystem. The deflector buckets have five, the ridge cap has three, the top deck has four. Pad 2 currently runs four, two, and three. Pad 2 will probably get this upgrade later once there's downtime; Pad 1 likely gets it right away. Another deluge change at LC-39A: just past the flame trench exits there are dips in the concrete with drainage at the bottom, meant to recapture unused deluge water. There's no room for that at Starbase, but it could go into both planned SLC-37 pads. A recent structural test used the ibproofen alignment tool on the launch mount. This tooling was built at Starbase to load-test and align all 20 hold-down arms and clamps. It might stay at the Cape for SLC-37A or head back to Starbase for Pad 1. Either use is at least 12 months out. The service structure has most or all of its cladding on, though interior finishing work could still be ongoing. What's left includes the methane BQD door, the back hoods of both BQDs, hooking up both BQDs, and full testing. The chopsticks are finally reeved, so they can move up and down the tower. The carriage went on the LC-39A tower in early February 2023, two months before Starship Flight 1. Both parts of the stabilizer arm are installed on the chopstick, and the other chopstick's stabilizer arm is likely fully installed as well. The tower has been stacked since September 2022 and recently started getting cladding. The drawworks housing at the tower base was modified with a sloped protective roof, matching the Pad 2 tower base at Starbase. A blast wall protects the tank farm from launch forces. More of it still has to be built to reach the far end of the methane side. On the tank farm itself, two more LOX storage tanks went in a few months back, bringing the total to six. There are still open spots for additional LOX and liquid methane tanks, plus liquid nitrogen tanks on both sides. Extra parts are staged nearby, including several vaporizers and three of the smaller subcoolers that could end up on the methane side. Three transport stands barged over from Starbase sit just inside LC-39A: two ship stands and one booster stand, currently in front of the Horizontal Integration Facility. Plenty of milestones remain: OLM top-deck water deluge testing, full launch rehearsal retracts, vehicle tanking tests, and a booster static fire, among others. Booster 22 and Ship 42 recently began stacking in their Mega Bays. If Flights 13 and 14 go clean, those two could head to the Cape and stack on LC-39A's mount, possibly by year's end.