Space.com reports (as does Florida Today) that SpaceX has been approved to launch its Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral Pad 40 (LC40). LC40 is one pad removed from LC39A (used for the Space Shuttle) and is next to LC41, which is used for the Atlas V.
For several years, SpaceX has been discussing using LC36A & B, but apparently the Air Force wanted the company elsewhere. I would be interested in knowing the relative attractiveness of LC40, since it could indicate the level of trust that the Air Force has placed in SpaceX's program. The Wikipedia article linked above mentions that during the 1960s, the Air Force planned manned flights out of LC40 and LC41. Perhaps the scale of rockets contemplated for LC40 and LC41 is larger than for the other pads. If SpaceX ever decides to build its Merlin 2 or Merlin 3 engines (as a recently tortured quote of Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, confessed was still a possibility), scale of infrastructure might become important.
The space.com article above quotes Musk as saying that retrofitting LC40 for the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 will cost the company "several tens of millions of dollars." Now I have an order of magnitude answer for my long-standing curiosity regarding the infrastructure costs for manned flights. Sounds expensive! Musk states that all of the currently scheduled Falcon 9 launches are planned out of Cape Canaveral -- none are planned out of Kwajalein. Even though no Falcon 9 flights are planned out of Kwajalein, I wonder whether SpaceX also will upgrade Kwajalein to handle the rocket.
The first launch of the Falcon 9 is slotted for 2Q 2008 -- about a year from now. Development on the rocket continues apace, with the recent fabrication of the first stage tank. Now it's off to McGregor, Texas for first stage test firing later this year.
Update: SpaceFlightNow has a nice, detailed article about SpaceX at the Cape. The article contains lots of good quotes from Musk.
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