NASA’s historic launch pad to be demolished

NASA Mobile Launcher Platform-2 – a framework involved in the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions – is being demolished. Incredibly, the space agency is getting rid of the massive platform to make room for parking lots, like collectSpace reports.

In a few weeks, Mobile Launcher-2, or MLP-2, will be gone.

Built over 50 years ago, NASA’s historic launcher was involved in notable missions like Apollo 12 and 14 (the two manned missions to the Moon), Skylab (a precursor to the International Space Station), and each inaugural Space Sshuttle launch except for Columbia. More doubtful, MLP-2 was the platform from which the Challenger shuttle made its final, tragic flight in 1986. In total, MLP-2 was involved in more than 50 launches from 1968 to 2011. So yes, a lot of history is attached to this towering 160 feet long, 135 feetT-large, 25 foot-tall structure (if you want more details on MLP-2, including a list of every NASA mission he’s been involved in, be sure to check out this fan page).

Like Robert Pearlman of collectSPACE reports, The NASA made the decision to demolish the platform for too trivial a reason.

Given its history, “one would expect the MLP-2 to be retired as a museum artifact,” Pearlman wrote, or that it “could continue to serve some purpose, like both. other legacy Apollo and Shuttle mobile launch platforms have and are doing. “But as Scott Tenhoff, project manager for the demolition of MLP-2, told Pearlman, the space agency is getting rid of the platform. form “because we lack parking spaces”.

Oof.

As Pearlman rightly points out, NASA has two similar platforms, MLP-1 (formerly ML-3) and MLP-3 (formerly ML-1). Built between 1963 and 1965, these three platforms were assembled for the Saturn V, Saturn IB and Saturn INT-21 rockets (the latter of which never took off). After Apollo, the structures were transformed, renamed and put to use for the space shuttle program.

But NASA is now entering the Artemis era, and the old platform cannot support the weight of NASA’s future mega-socket, the Space launch system, nor an umbilical tower to support its launch, according to collectSPACE. To this end, NASA completed a new platform in 2018 called ML-1 and began the construction of a second, to call ML-2, Last year. That’s a lot of huge material lying around, which led to the decision to dismantle MLP-2.

Neither MLP-1 nor MLP-3 (pictured above) are currently scheduled for demolition, and MLP-1 is currently being used to prepare the tracks (the paths taken by the mobile launchers to the launch pad) for the next Space launch system. As NASA’s Ground Systems exploration explains in a recent Tweeter, MLP-1 will ensure that “the path is strong enough to support the weight of the next @NASAArtemis I run, ”which could happen later this year.

The demolition process is expected to take about a month. The contractors doing the work, Frank-Lin Services of Brevard, use excavators with hydraulic shears to cut the platform section by section until it is no more, Tenhoff told collectSPACE.

Before dismantling Mobile Launcher-2, NASA had asked around if anyone had any interest in salvaging pieces of the gigantic structure, including the Smithsonian. Nobody answered.

It’s easy to be cynical about all of this, especially the parking lot stuff, but sometimes you just have to move on. Hopefully some smart people take out the important things like a license plate or something of similar nostalgic value. Storing this gigantic structure next to a museum is obviously not plausible, but it would make sense to highlight some of its parts. MLP-2 is too iconic to be thrown away and forgotten.