Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 11

Launch Complex 11 (LC-11) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, is a launch complex used by Atlas missiles between 1958 and 1964. It is the southernmost of the launch pads known as missile row. When it was built, it, along with complexes 12, 13 and 14, featured a more robust design than many contemporary pads, due to the greater power of the Atlas compared to other rockets of the time. It was larger, and featured a 6 metres (20 ft) tall concrete launch pedestal, and a reinforced blockhouse. The rockets were delivered to the launch pad by a ramp on the southwest side of the launch pedestal.

Thirty-two Atlas B, D, E and F missiles were launched on suborbital test flights from LC-11. The first launch to use the complex was Atlas 3B, the first full-duration flight of an Atlas B, which was launched on 19 July 1958. In addition to the suborbital tests, one orbital launch was conducted from the complex. On 18 November 1958, Atlas 10B launched SCORE, the world's first communications satellite into low Earth orbit.

Following the end of Atlas testing at Cape Canaveral, LC-11 was the only one of the four Atlas pads not to be reused by the Atlas-Agena, and hence was first of the four pads to be deactivated. Following deactivation, the mobile service tower and support equipment were dismantled, and the site is no longer maintained.

Famous quotes containing the words cape, air, force, station, launch and/or complex:

    A solitary traveler whom we saw perambulating in the distance loomed like a giant. He appeared to walk slouchingly, as if held up from above by straps under his shoulders, as much as supported by the plain below. Men and boys would have appeared alike at a little distance, there being no object by which to measure them. Indeed, to an inlander, the Cape landscape is a constant mirage.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty—this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism.
    Thomas Mann (1875–1955)

    In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
    Edmund Burke (1729–1797)

    ...I believe it is now the duty of the slaves of the South to rebuke their masters for their robbery, oppression and crime.... No station or character can destroy individual responsibility, in the matter of reproving sin.
    Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)

    I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is made ... and at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Uneducated people are unfortunate in that they do grasp complex issues, educated people, on the other hand, often do not understand simplicity, which is a far greater misfortune.
    Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)