SpaceX Begins Building for Starship Launches in Florida

During Monday’s broadcast of Starship’s scrubbed eighth test flight, Christopher Gebhardt from the SpaceX communications team revealed the company plans to launch Starship—the largest rocket ever built—from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida as soon as this year. Per a statement from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, SpaceX will spend about $1.8 billion on the project and create 600 jobs by 2030.

LC-39A is leased by SpaceX and hosts routine launches of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles. But to date, all Starship missions have lifted off from Starbase in South Texas.

“Florida is the present and future of the space industry with leading space companies—like SpaceX—investing in the free state of Florida,” said DeSantis. “We welcome SpaceX’s Starship to our state.”

In a post-broadcast update Monday, SpaceX said it has already begun site preparations at Kennedy to install a massive stacking and integration facility called Gigabase. The building is expected to stand 380 feet tall—a few feet shorter than the stacked Starship upper stage and Super Heavy booster—and contain 11 times the workforce square footage and double the crane capacity of its Megabay facility at Starbase. SpaceX is also building a Gigabay next to its Starfactory manufacturing hub in Texas. Both are expected to be complete by the end of 2026.

Next to the Kennedy Gigabay, SpaceX is designing a manufacturing building akin to Starfactory. It did not give a timeline for that facility. But before it is complete, the firm will move Starships from Starbase by barge to build up a fleet of rockets in Florida.

The company is also developing a Starship launch and catch pad at LC-39A to enable early operations later this year. It stacked a launch tower there in 2022 and in the coming months intends to install a deflector system, which it said will be nearly identical to a system being added to Starbase.

But before Starship can launch from Florida, SpaceX will need to produce an environmental impact statement (EIS) under the oversight of the FAA. The agency last year published a notice of intent to prepare the EIS and took comments from the public, but its webpage for the project was last updated in June. Per that page, SpaceX aims to launch Starship and Super Heavy from LC-39A and recover it at the pad or on a floating droneship. The proposal also calls for Starship and Super Heavy splashdowns in the ocean.

SpaceX on Monday said it received a limited right of entry to evaluate Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at the neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which until recently launched United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV rocket. The company said it is “interested” in launching Starship there as well, pending another EIS led by the U.S. Air Force. According to the project's webpage, the Air Force expects to publish a draft EIS in the spring and a final version by the fall.

At the same time, SpaceX is looking to ramp up Starship operations in Texas, with a goal of launching and landing the rocket and booster 25 times annually. Its current launch license permits five launches per year. The FAA in November released a draft environmental assessment for the proposal, which is still being evaluated.

The news of SpaceX’s coming expansion arrives as the firm gears up for the eighth test flight of Starship out of Starbase. After Monday’s scrubbed attempt, it expects to launch Flight 8 Thursday evening. The mission is expected to lay the groundwork for the catch and return of the Starship upper stage, a feat the company has achieved thrice with Super Heavy. That reusability will be key to allowing Starship to fly as often as SpaceX would like.

A human landing system (HLS) version of Starship is the assigned crew vehicle for NASA’s Artemis III lunar landing, scheduled for mid-2027. The rocket will need to demonstrate a number of capabilities before then, which means SpaceX will soon need to ramp up its cadence.

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