Space Force selects Blue Origin as possible lessor of “Sudden Flats” site at Vandenberg for future heavy lift rocket launches
The Space Force has chosen Blue Origin to help develop the plans and possibly lease the “Sudden Flats” site — also dubbed Space Launch Complex-14 (SLC-14) — at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California for the launch of heavy lift commercial rockets.
The location is shown in the map to the right. The Space Force had requested proposals for developing the site in December 2025.
Respondents were evaluated based on technical capability, financial maturity and alignment with U.S. government requirements. The selection of Blue Origin reflects their ability to meet these criteria and contribute to the development of heavy or super-heavy launch capabilities at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
SLC-14 is considered the most viable site at [Vandenberg] for heavy and super-heavy launch operations due to its location.
Several crucial milestones must be achieved before any construction or launch activities can commence, to include safety assessments and an environmental impact analysis. The timeline for increased launch activity will depend on the completion of the safety and environmental analysis and subsequent infrastructure development.
I suspect that Blue Origin won this bid because SpaceX didn’t offer a proposal. It already has three launch sites for Starship/Superheavy, and probably decided it didn’t need this site.
Blue Origin meanwhile in November 2025 announced planned upgrades to its New Glenn rocket that would make it as powerful as NASA’s SLS rocket, but much cheaper because its first stage is reusable. The company is likely hoping to build that rocket, dubbed New Glenn 9×4 (based on the number of engines on the first and second stages respectively), and launch it from this site.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The Space Force has chosen Blue Origin to help develop the plans and possibly lease the “Sudden Flats” site — also dubbed Space Launch Complex-14 (SLC-14) — at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California for the launch of heavy lift commercial rockets.
The location is shown in the map to the right. The Space Force had requested proposals for developing the site in December 2025.
Respondents were evaluated based on technical capability, financial maturity and alignment with U.S. government requirements. The selection of Blue Origin reflects their ability to meet these criteria and contribute to the development of heavy or super-heavy launch capabilities at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
SLC-14 is considered the most viable site at [Vandenberg] for heavy and super-heavy launch operations due to its location.
Several crucial milestones must be achieved before any construction or launch activities can commence, to include safety assessments and an environmental impact analysis. The timeline for increased launch activity will depend on the completion of the safety and environmental analysis and subsequent infrastructure development.
I suspect that Blue Origin won this bid because SpaceX didn’t offer a proposal. It already has three launch sites for Starship/Superheavy, and probably decided it didn’t need this site.
Blue Origin meanwhile in November 2025 announced planned upgrades to its New Glenn rocket that would make it as powerful as NASA’s SLS rocket, but much cheaper because its first stage is reusable. The company is likely hoping to build that rocket, dubbed New Glenn 9×4 (based on the number of engines on the first and second stages respectively), and launch it from this site.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Space X is just sitting back doing its thing.
They know that by the time any competitor is even close to them, that company will drop the ball and Space X just needs to agree to pick up the ball. and take the contract.
“Sudden Flats”
“Wallops”
Who names these things?
Every time there is a development at Vandenberg; I think of the CCCP (California Coastal Commission People).
The original CCCP were friends to space…patriots who loved their mother country.
To compare them to California’s ick….for shame
There appear to be plenty of places at Vandy where SpaceX could site a future Starship launch complex. Given that its proposed Earth-orbital AI data center constellation is to be placed in high-inclination orbits, SpaceX may well be interested in ginning up such a facility, but there is no urgent reason to start such a project just yet. SpaceX has plenty on its plate already in getting its currently planned five Starship pads up and running. And Terafab is also on the critical path for that AI data center constellation. All in good time.
Jeff Wright,
Soviet leaders cared very little about space except as a propaganda tool. Whatever people like Korolev and Glushko thought, what Stalin, Khrushchev, et al. wanted was power and geopolitical wins. That’s why they pretended they hadn’t been racing to the Moon once it became clear that they couldn’t derive any propaganda value from it.
On topic, I wish I had a time machine to go look at Vandenberg in a decade or two to see who’s operating there and how many launches the complex sees in a typical month. SpaceX and Blue will likely be dominant, ULA probably won’t exist at all, but who knows who else will emerge?
Hello Dick,
‘SpaceX may well be interested in ginning up such a facility, but there is no urgent reason to start such a project just yet. SpaceX has plenty on its plate already in getting its currently planned five Starship pads up and running.”
Yeah. And more to the point, because (as we have discussed before) a Vandenberg Starship launch complex would require a Star Factory in the vicinity (or at worst, at Hawthorne, to be shipped up the coast), too, unless they want to go to the bother of shipping boosters and Starships through the Panama Canal, and that strikes me as….doubtful. Otherwise, that’s a big investment of resources and time.
I think it will still happen at some point, but it is reasonable to think that it is a low priority for Elon right now. The five Starship pads now under construction seem likely to be adequate for SpaceX’s needs for the balance of the 2020’s.
I am hoping Stoke will fly at Vandy one day.
I get bad vibes from Neutron and Terran R.
Jeff Wright,
The original CCCP were commies and so is pretty much every Democrat elected official in CA so the comparison is not inapt at all.
Richard M,
Hawthorne is way too far inland to be a Starfactory.
Vandenberg is bigger than it looks at first glance so SpaceX could probably build a Starfactory there. But once it is launching from both TX and FL it could probably just use a pad tower at Vandy to catch Starships launched elsewhere, then re-launch them from there.
The transport barge SpaceX got to carry Super Heavies and Starships from TX to FL would work just fine through the Panama Canal. So sending a few Super Heavies from Starbase to the Left Coast is certainly doable. You’ll Thank Me Later (YTML) is nowhere near Panamax in beam. Anyway, SpaceX has already had experience sending OCISLY through the Panama Canal so it’s not like sending YTML through would be any particular novelty.
There might need to be some structure built at Vandy between a Megabay and a Gigabay in size to handle maintenance and refurb but there’s plenty of room for that too.
Whether SpaceX ever does any of this stuff, of course, would depend upon just how much Elon wants to cut down his footprint in CA. As long as he stays within the Vandy perimeter, though, he should be safe from state-level depredations of any kind.
All we can do is wait and see.
All theoretically true, yes. But I think we have to agree that if Elon wants to do Starship operations *at scale* out of Vandenberg, he really needs a Star Factory somewhere close at hand. If it’s only meant to operate at a lower tempo for occasional SSO launches, then maybe he could get away with transporting Starship stages there via other means.
Honestly, looking at what will happen *next*, I think that if he decides to pursue more launch complexes beyond the five already completed or in construction, it will first happen at either Boca Chica or (more likely) the Cape. For example, I have seen rumors that a second pad at LC-39A has been considered. And there are other possibilities . . . The advantage is that you’ve already got most of the necessary infrastructure in place, you don’t have to build it all from scratch again.
I think something will happen at Vandy, but probably not until some point in the 2030’s.
All: Don’t forget, SpaceX owns the lease for the SLC-6 pad that was originally built for the shuttle (and never used) and later for ULA’s Delta family of rockets. SpaceX is presently configuring it for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, but it is quite large enough to put a Starship/Superheavy facility there at some point. Nothing soon, but when SpaceX get to a point when it wishes to retire the Falcons it will not let this lease go to waste.
Robert Zimmerman,
Salient point there about SLC-6 at Vandy. At some point – probably in the early 2030s – SpaceX will want to finally retire the Falcons entirely. At that point, every current Falcon pad – all four of them – will most likely be rebuilt to handle Starships.
Richard M,
I think SpaceX could build a Starship pad or two and necessary support infrastructure at Vandy before decade’s end without also building a third Starfactory at the same time. But once the Falcons retire and both SLC-4E and SLC-6 are available for conversion to Starship trim, building another Starfactory at Vandy would likely look a lot more attractive.
If SpaceX builds, say, a pair of Starship pad facilities on currently unoccupied land at Vandy north of the coastal hills, those hills would keep Starship ops from interfering much with the launch ops of other firms with pads farther south. That would be less true of Starship conversions at SLC-4E and SLC-6, but might still be doable. That could give SpaceX a third Starfactory and three or four Starship pads at Vandy by the early-to-mid-20230s. If SpaceX could build a pair of Starship pads on each of its extant Falcon sites at Vandy – ala SLC-37 at Canaveral – the number could be a half-dozen.
At KSC-Canaveral, in addition to the three Starship pads already under construction, a fourth could be located on the opposite side of LC-39A from the one already nearing completion there. If SpaceX manages to wangle a lease on LC-39B once SLS is gone, two more could be built flanking it. Come to that, the extant pads could also be converted to Starship use. SLC-40 could also be converted to support a pair of Starship pads as is already underway at SLC-37. The same could be done with SLC-41 once ULA goes toes-up. That would give SpaceX a dozen Starship pads at KSC-Canaveral by the mid-2030s.
Admittedly, SpaceX might not get all of the named properties. It seems likely that Elon would have to rassle Jeff B. for at least one or two of them. But doubling SpaceX’s currently-in-the-works Starship pad count at KSC-Canaveral looks pretty straightforward and tripling or quadrupling said count is at least not precluded by any laws of physics.