Having been invited to a special viewing of the newly refurbished 450 ft. long flame trench, we had the opportunity to speak with NASA's Regina Spellman about the progress of LC-39b and what's next.
The recent updates, which are near completion, are long overdue but have served the program well for the past 50 years since (Apollo 10 first launched from here on May 18, 1969). However, once service resumes at 39b, the trench will "never look this beautiful again" which we feel is also kind of exciting. Back in 2007, modifications were started and since then every system has been replaced or updated. Included in this project was the replacement and repair of all the damaged, worn an d displaced bricks which protect the trench. These bricks (over 96,000 were installed on the north wall) are a tongue and groove fire type brick which are high in aluminium oxide content to withstand the intense heat. The blast wall is also extremely robust and is made up of 144 steel plates that are 4 inches thick and weigh about 2 tons each. Regina also explained that those individual 'shingle like' plates are easily replaced once worn down after being exposed the the extreme (over 2200 degrees Fahrenheit) temperatures encountered during a launch (which shouldn't be needed for the first few launches). Another change is that the deflector was left open in the back so it could be more easily serviced as opposed to the Shuttle era. All in all, lots of thought went into making this new Launch Complex super robust and reusable for the heavy traffic headed its way.