NASA ’s Mobile Launcher Platform-2 — a structure involved in the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions — is in the process of being tear down . fabulously , the space agency is ridding itself of the massive platform to make elbow room for parking outer space , as collectSpacereports .
In a thing of week , Mobile Launcher-2 , or MLP-2 , will be no more .
Built more than 50 years ago , the historic NASA rocket launcher was involved in such celebrated missionary work as Apollo 12 and 14 ( both crew missions to the Moon ) , Skylab ( a precursor to the International Space Station ) , and every inaugural Space Shuttle launching save for Columbia . More dubiously , MLP-2 was the program from which the Challenger shuttle made its final , tragic flight of stairs in 1986 . In total , MLP-2 was involved in over 50 launch from 1968 through 2011 . So yeah , a plenty of chronicle wear round onto this hulking 160 - infantry - long , 135 - foot - wide , 25 - foot - magniloquent body structure ( if you want more details about MLP-2 , including a list of every NASA foreign mission it was involve in , be certain to check out this extensivefan pageboy ) .
The space shuttle Atlantis on Mobile Launcher Platform-2 prior to launch on 22 December 2024.Image: NASA
As Robert Pearlman from collectSPACEreports , NASA made the decision to pulverize the platform for a rationality that ’s all too old-hat .
yield its history , “ it might be expect that MLP-2 would be retreat as a museum artifact , ” compose Pearlman , or that “ it might continue to serve some design , as the two other Apollo and shuttlecock legacy Mobile River launch political platform have and are doing . ” But as Scott Tenhoff , projection handler for MLP-2 ’s wipeout , told Pearlman , the distance way is getting rid of the platform “ because we ’re running out of parking places . ”
Oof .
The Saturn V rocket used for Apollo 12, as it rests on MLP-2 in 1969.Image: NASA
But NASA is now enter into the Artemis era , and the old - timey platform ca n’t tolerate the exercising weight of NASA ’s upcoming megarocket , theSpace Launch System , nor an umbilical tugboat to support its launch , according to collectSPACE . To that end , NASA completed a new platform in 2018 calledML-1and set about building of a second , to be calledML-2 , last yr . That ’s a lot of immense computer hardware lie around , leading to the decisiveness to pull down MLP-2 .
Neither MLP-1 or MLP-3 ( image above ) are presently slated for demolition , and MLP-1 is presently being used to prepare crawlerways ( the paths taken by the mobile launcher to the launch pad ) for the forthcoming Space Launch System . As NASA ’s Exploration Ground Systems explained in a recenttweet , MLP-1 will ensure that the “ path is strong enough to support the exercising weight for the upcoming@NASAArtemisI launch , ” which could come about later this year .
A crawler and 2 mobile launcher platform at the MSS park website at@NASAKennedy , Jan. 4 . One CT and MLP are assisting in crawlerway conditioning to ensure the itinerary is strong enough to support the weight for the upcoming@NASAArtemisI launching . The other MLP is being retired.pic.twitter.com/CxdfjS3yEE
Mobile Launcher Platform-3 as it appeared in 2011.Image: NASA
— NASA ’s Exploration Ground Systems ( @NASAGroundSys)January 6 , 2021
The destruction mental process is expect to take about one month . The contractor doing the piece of work , Frank - Lin Services of Brevard , are using excavators with hydraulic shears to cut the program down plane section by division until it is no more , Tenhoff tell collectSPACE .
Prior to dismantling Mobile Launcher-2 , NASA hadasked aroundif anyone had interestingness in salve bits from the gigantic structure , include the Smithsonian . No one respond .
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-considers-second-hotfire-test-of-megarocket-afte-1846094161
It ’s easy to be cynical about all of this , peculiarly the whole parking mountain matter , but sometimes you just catch ta move on . Hopefully some smart masses are take aside the important moment , like a number plate or something of similar nostalgic value . lay in this gigantic structure next to a museum is obviously not plausible , but it would make sense to showcase some of its parts . MLP-2 is just far too iconic to be cast aside and forgotten .
Artemis programFloridaNASASpaceflight
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