Launch Complex 19 was originally built from 1957 to 1959 for the
United States Air Force as part of the
Titan I missile program, being used for test launches alongside
LC-20 to the north and
LC-15 and
LC-16 to the south. The first launch out of the complex was made on August 14, 1959, when a Titan I exploded on the pad thanks to a premature engine shutdown after liftoff. This extensively damaged LC-19, which took a few months to repair before the first successful flight occurred on February 2, 1960. Going from 1959 to 1962, the complex saw a total of 15 launches of the Titan I, all of them being suborbital flights and 12 of them being labeled as successes. On January 29, 1962, the Air Force launched their final Titan I from LC-19, as the
ICBM was slated to be replaced by the
hypergolic fueled
LGM-25C Titan II. Unlike the previous era where all four Titan pads were used for missile tests, the military decided to only utilize LC-15 and 16 for that purpose at
Cape Canaveral. Later in the year,
NASA announced that they had chosen LC-19 to be the launch site of
Project Gemini, of which its eponymous spacecraft would make use of a
human-rated Titan II named the
Titan II GLV. As part of Gemini, the facility underwent various modifications to support
crewed spaceflight. Most notably, the
booster erector had a
white room installed at the top in order to support the egress of
astronauts. The first launch in this configuration (and the first orbital launch from the complex) occurred on April 8, 1964 for
Gemini 1, an uncrewed mission that tested both the capsule's structural integrity and the flight-worthiness of the GLV. LC-19 joined
LC-5 and
LC-14 as the third pad at the Cape to support a crewed spaceflight with the launch of
Gemini 3 on March 23, 1965, which carried
Gus Grissom and
John Young into
low Earth orbit. Throughout the entirety of the program, LC-19 was the site of all 12 of the 19 launches associated with Project Gemini (the other seven launching from
LC-14), all 12 numbered missions, and all ten missions carrying astronauts. Among the notable flights that started at the facility include the first American
spacewalk with
Gemini 4, the first close
rendezvous with
Gemini 7 and
6A, and the first
docking with
Gemini 8. Also noteworthy was
Gemini 11, which set a non-
Apollo distance record of 1,374 km (854 mi) from Earth that stood until
Polaris Dawn in 2024. The final mission of the program that launched from the complex was
Gemini 12, which launched on November 11, 1966 and carried
Jim Lovell and
Buzz Aldrin into orbit. Following the liftoff, LC-19 was deactivated from use and has sat dormant in the years since. On May 30, 1977, the launch tower and umbilical used for supporting the Titan launches were demolished in order to prevent dangers associated with rusting. Additionally, LC-19 alongside the rest of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was designated as a
National Historic Landmark in April 1984. Currently, LC-19 is the only complex in Missile Row that has not previously been leased to a
NewSpace company, and is currently sandwiched between
Firefly Aerospace's lease of SLC-20 and
Relativity Space's presence at LC-16. However, the
United States Space Force has made intentions of leasing the pad out in the near future. ==Launch history==