Space Launch Complex 4 (SLC-4) was a launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, used by Atlas and Titan rockets between 1963 and 2005. It consisted of two separate launch pads, SLC-4W and SLC-4E, which were formerly designated PALC2-3 and PALC2-4 respectively. Both pads were originally built for use by Atlas-Agena rockets, but were later rebuilt to handle Titan rockets. The designation SLC-4 was applied at the time of the conversion to launch Titans.
Space Launch Complex 4E is currently being redeveloped and used by SpaceX as a launch site for the Falcon 9 rocket. The first launch is scheduled for 2013. The 24 month refurbishment program started in early 2011. As of August 2011, demolition work on the pad's fixed and mobile service towers, with most of the fixed tower removed and the hammerhead crane removed from the mobile service tower.
Famous quotes containing the words space, launch and/or complex:
“But alas! I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises, that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
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—D.H. (David Herbert)
“All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.”
—Terry Eagleton (b. 1943)