Launch Complex 12 (LC-12) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida was a launch pad used by Atlas rockets and missiles between 1958 and 1967. It was the second-most southern of the pads known as missile row, between LC-11 to the south and LC-13 to the north. Along with Complexes 11, 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 means of a ramp on the southwest side of the launch pedestal.
Atlas A, C and D missiles were tested from the site. It was also used for orbital launches of Atlas-Able and later Atlas-Agena rockets, and two Project FIRE suborbital tests for Project Apollo, using Atlas D rockets.
On 24 September 1959, the first Atlas-Able, 9C, exploded during a static firing test at LC-12, after a turbopump on one of the engines failed triggering a complete engine shutdown. The damaged turbopump continued to allow oxidizer to flow, feeding the fire beneath the vehicle. About a minute later the rocket suffered a structural failure, collapsed and exploded. Damage from the explosion took seven months to repair, with the next launch from the complex occurring in May 1960.
In 1961, LC-12 was converted to support the Atlas-Agena rocket. The first Atlas-Agena launch from LC-12 was in August 1961. On 23 April 1962, Atlas-Agena B 133D launched Ranger 4, the first American spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon, when it made a hard landing at an impact speed of 9,617 kilometres per hour (5,976 mph).
On 27 August 1962, Mariner 2 was launched by Atlas-Agena B 179D, the first spacecraft conduct a successful flyby of another planet when it flew past Venus on 14 December 1962. On 28 July 1964, Atlas-Agena B 250D launched Ranger 7, which was the first fully successful Ranger mission. On 28 November 1964, Atlas-Agena D 288D launched with Mariner 4, which provided the first close-up pictures of Mars.
In 1967, LC-12 became the third of the four Atlas pads to be deactivated. Following deactivation, the launch tower, mobile service structure and launch support equipment were dismantled, and the site is no longer maintained.
Famous quotes containing the words cape, air, force, station, launch and/or complex:
“The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. To the average man, doomed to some banal drudgery all his life long, they offer the only grand hazard that he ever encounters. Take them away, and his existence would be as flat and secure as that of a moo-cow.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Liberty is the air that we Americans breathe. Our Government is based on the belief that a people can be both strong and free. That civilized men need no restraint but that imposed by themselves against the abuse of freedom.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“I kept him for his humour’s sake,
For he would oft beguile
My heart of thoughts that made it ache,
And force me to a smile.”
—William Cowper (1731–1800)
“To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life.”
—Sarah Ellis (1812–1872)
“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)
“All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)