Launch Pad 39C

[Glaran K'erman]

NASA opened up a new small vehicle launch pad designed for sub 500kg payloads; designed specifically to be adaptable and cheap it's supposed to help open the market to smaller groups trying to get stuff into space. My question is why hasn't this been done sooner? Also sounding rockets have been around for quite a while why is there a shortage on low-mass pads?

[HoloYolo]

My assumption is that they launched heavy payloads all the time due to barely used and explored technology. Now that we got light weight materials a smaller launchpad has more of a purpose.

[K^2]

There weren't a lot of companies interested in a launchpad like that. Part of it is because private launches are only becoming a thing. The other part is that as Kaboom points out, it wasn't easy to build small rockets. Still isn't. From perspective of rocketry, the larger it is, the less trouble it is to get it to space. Of course, at some point, you start running into just your regular engineering problems of building something really big, like, how do you get it to not collapse under its own weight. But there is a sweet spot for cost efficiency, which used to be pretty big. And now, with new materials, we can go much smaller and still provide cost-efficient launches.

[Kryten]

This was only viable due to the recent major increase in smallsats being produced, as they're now starting to overwhelm providers of ridreshares; this in turn had led to reasonably viable smallsat launch providers like RocketLab. Also, while not formally confirmed, there's a good chance this pad had already started construction for the cancelled DoD SWORDS small launcher project.

Edited July 31, 2015 by Kryten

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

Basically, most sounding rockets are only a couple of tons at the heaviest, whereas the smallest orbital launchers are in the tens of tons. Typical sounding rockets also use a "rail" type pad, as opposed to the designs used by orbital vehicles. Finally, because sounding rockets are suborbital, their launch pads are often placed in locations where an orbital launch would fly over populated areas. So, sounding rocket pads aren't usually suitable for orbital launch vehicles.

[Glaran K'erman]

Thanks guys!