Now, I say short distance, but considering what needs to be moved, this is the spacecraft equivalent of running a marathon up Mt Everest. What we see nicely prepared on the launch pad as mission control counts down to zero has to be painstakingly constructed beforehand a short distance away. The VAB is 5.6 km (3.5 miles) from Launch Pad 39A and 6.4 km (4.5 miles) from Launch Pad 39B and it’s here that the sections of the spacecraft, along with additional fuel boosters, are carefully assembled. This takes place in NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), one of the largest buildings in the world, standing at 160.3 metres (526 feet) with a volume of 3,665,000 m3 (129,428,000 cubic feet) – which is 40 times that of the Albert Hall. But what we see is only a fraction of what happens in the build-up to a launch.įirstly, whatever is going into space is not assembled on the launch pad. There’s a tower, there’s a spaceship, there’s a countdown, there’s a lot of fire – it all seems to happen quite quickly. No doubt many have seen a space shuttle launch. If you’re a little unfamiliar with space launches you might be a little confused as to what exactly a Crawler Transporter is and maybe even why I’m getting so excited about them. Size is everything with these monsters but who can blame them when their most frequent passengers were the Space Shuttles which weighed in at a hefty 2,000 tons and measured 56 metres (184 ft) from nose to engine exhausts. They are the largest self-powered land vehicles in the world and each one weighs an astronomical 2,712 tons – that’s about a quarter of the Eiffel Tower or 17 Statue Liberties, without their bases. NASA’s Crawler Transporters, officially named CT-1 and C-T2 but nicknamed Hans and Franz, really need to be seen to be believed. The Vehicle Assembly Building is just visible at upper right. This replacement is part of the “Return to Flight” program, and Crawler #2 was used to transport Space Shuttle Discovery to the launch pad for the STS-114 mission. Crawler-transporter #2 beginning a road test on 21 December 2004 after replacement of the shoes on its caterpillar tracks.
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