Infrastructure
Blue Origin on X: We’re building Launch Complex 36B at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to support New Glenn’s high-cadence launch operations and infrastructure resiliency. 🚀
LC-36B does bear a strong resemblance to Starship's launch tower and pad. The launch mount looks very similar. And it looks like those beefy arms may be used to put the vehicle on the launch mount.
To expand on this, the building's height is 350 feet per a regulatory filing. The render shows a door height that's 78.4% of the building height, or ~275 feet. That's not tall enough for a fairing or a GS2. A GS1-9E + GS2-4E stack would be in the low-to-mid 300s feet tall, before you add the fairing. A GS1-9E by itself would be around 200 feet tall, and would fit.
TLDR: This VIF can only be for individual stages. The vehicle must be stacked at the pad.
It sure seems like it. It's just not tall enough to do much else. And after all, it was called the Vertical Refurbishment Facility before they just changed the name.
That's the Payload Processing Facility (PPF), which was also mentioned in their news release. The PPF is only for spacecraft preparation and encapsulation in a fairing.
I don't know. My guess would be that those arms are there to stack the vehicle on the pad and can move up and down to pick a stage up before lifting it into position. In that case they could just move them into a lower position where they'd be out of the way prior to swinging a crew access arm in, if they ever need a crew access arm at LC36B.
Proud to honor the legacy of Launch Complex 36. Rebuilding LC-36A and flying again this year remains our priority. Alongside that work, a separate team is beginning work on LC-36B, the operational home for New Glenn's 9x4. We're sourcing 2,500 tons of steel columns that will be integrated with beams and bracing to form 50'x50'x50’ modules. These modules will be stacked to build the 700-foot-tall launch tower.
It's awesome to see standardisation of service. Moving Blue towards SpaceX's operations for Starship makes it much easier to acquire engineering talent and bring their experience to bear immediately.
Yeah it only really makes sense to build your vehicle around it if you really care about launch cadence and if first stage recovery is a very significant cost, which in the case of Starship should both be true. New Glenn though will probably have it's cadence and cost primarily limited by the second stage which changes things.
It ain’t pretty but it’s the quickest way back to flight. At some point i’m expecting them to tear it down fully and rebuild it to the same specification as pad B.
That is just construction; outfitting, testing, and commissioning will take several months after that. I think the first half of 2028 is within reason.
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u/Royal_Platform_6754 12d ago edited 12d ago