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NASA's Giant Crawler-Transporter Is Getting an Upgrade

Posted by Soulskill on from the new-paint-job-and-millions-of-pounds-of-carrying-capacity dept.

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Transportation Nation: "Retired space shuttles are being readied for museums, but there's one piece of equipment at the Kennedy Space Center that dates back to before the moon landing and it's not going anywhere. NASA's giant crawler transporter is the only machine with enough muscle to move Apollo rockets and space shuttles out to the launch pad, and after nearly 50 years on the job the agency's decided there's still no better way to transport heavy loads. It's about as wide as a six lane highway, higher than a two story building, with huge caterpillar treads at each of its four corners. ... Crawler two is being upgraded from its current lifting capacity of 12 million pounds — the combined weight of the shuttle and mobile launcher — to 18 million pounds, for NASA’s new heavy lift rocket."

16 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Stupid question... by Yvanhoe · · Score: 2

    ... but why don't they build the rocket on the take-off location and remove the building instead? It seems like a smaller effort, no?

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
    1. Re:Stupid question... by Ogive17 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Would you want a "temporary building" housing a billion dollar investment in an area prone to hurricanes?

      --
      "Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
    2. Re:Stupid question... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ... but why don't they build the rocket on the take-off location and remove the building instead? It seems like a smaller effort, no?

      Go look at pictures of the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building - no, you find the links). The largest indoor space in the world. So you'd like to immolate it every time you launched a rocket? Sounds even more expensive than the crawler transporter.

      Just as a point of argument, there ARE other ways to do this sort of thing. The Russians like to put things together on the ground and then lift the entire mess up. I'm sure there were spirited discussions on the pros and cons of doing this in the 60's but this way certainly has been quite flexible.

      Sigh. This is part of my childhood - grew up around the thing. Nice to see that it's still there though.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    3. Re:Stupid question... by firex726 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Wiki disagrees with you. It's ONE of the largest, it's not THE largest.

      It's #6 on the list: Largest usable space

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings_in_the_world

    4. Re:Stupid question... by TubeSteak · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just as a point of argument, there ARE other ways to do this sort of thing. The Russians like to put things together on the ground and then lift the entire mess up. I'm sure there were spirited discussions on the pros and cons of doing this in the 60's but this way certainly has been quite flexible.

      The Russians like to move their rockets by rail.
      http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/04/02/article-1372645-0B724A6200000578-45_634x286.jpg
      It's a much simpler and faster process than the mega crawler NASA went went.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    5. Re:Stupid question... by Lumpy · · Score: 2

      Then NASA needs to switch to Diet Coke and mentos for the initial boost rockets...

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    6. Re:Stupid question... by Catmeat · · Score: 3, Informative
      ... but why don't they build the rocket on the take-off location and remove the building instead? It seems like a smaller effort, no?

      This is exactly what's done in some circumstances. During the 80's, there were plans to launch shuttles from Vandernberg AFB in California. The West-Coast launch site was known as SLC-6 and, if it had ever been used, would have worked in exactly this way. The downside is that the launch site is tied up for many months at a time. I believe SLC-6 was intended to handle around one launch per year.

      When the plans for Kennedy were laid out in the early 60's, the method of getting to the moon was still being decided. Early on, the leading option was Earth orbit rendezvous, which would have required two Saturn 5 launches per mission, with the rockets launched within hours of each other. Having a central assembly building with a capacity for several Saturn 5s [1] and three separate launch sites (although only two were actually built) was seen as the best way of doing this. Everything there now is a legacy of this, early-60's planning.

      However ESA in Kourou and the Russians in Baikonur do the same thing - separating assembly and launch sites. The hassle of having to move rockets about on the ground is more than made up for the fact that your launch rate isn't bottle-necked by the number of launch pads. And remember, the number of launch pads is always going to be limited as they have to be separated by many miles of empty land for safety reasons. Even on the Central Asian steppes, you'd only have space for so many.

      [1] I believe it could potentially accommodate four at various stages of assembly but don't quote me, I'm likely misremembering the exact number.

    7. Re:Stupid question... by cusco · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Has to do with the way the Soviet and the US/German design teams came at an issue. The Soviets (Korolev especially) wanted to be able to access and inspect everything up to the very last, thus the horizontal assembly. They were on an extremely tight budget and couldn't afford launch failures. The Americans assumed that the contractors and assembly teams would check everything, so just stacking the components vertically the way they had done it since the V-2 seemed logical. They had a much more expansive budget and a failure rate of 20 percent was seen as acceptable (at least by the contractors) until people started climbing aboard.

      --
      "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
  2. For what? by tekrat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If NASA thinks they are going to have a heavy-lift rocket, or even a manned space program, ever again, they obviously have not been reading the newspapers. For the next decade at least, they aren't going to do anything beyond a few GPS and communications satellites. And Elon Musk is going to grab most of that business. Joyrides are being handled by two other companies and the Russians are providing the lifts to the ISS, until that too, is deorbited for lack of funds.

    Short of a "Pearl Harbor" style incident that forces us back into space in a big way (say, the Chinese land on the moon, or a chunk of falling rock wipes out LA), the government is as committed to NASA as the average Slashdotter is committed to becoming the Pope.

    --
    If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
  3. Why does it have brakes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Can't help but wonder since it moves so slow, but still, how far would it freeroll if you didn't have brakes?

    1. Re:Why does it have brakes? by squidflakes · · Score: 3, Informative

      It would have to be on a hell of an incline. The friction between the tracks and the suspension is enormous. I've ridden the thing a couple of times and they really have to gun the throttles to get everything rolling. After that, they throttle down just a bit to maintain a nice even pace.

    2. Re:Why does it have brakes? by Squeebee · · Score: 2

      Keep in mind that the crawler isn't just impressive because of the weight it can haul, but also because of the pinpoint accuracy with which is can place it's load. Yes, it could freeroll a little bit, but you won't get a spacecraft positioned within a fraction of an inch that way (think of all the connectors and arms attached to a rocket or shuttle, getting all those couplings right required the rocket or shuttle to be placed very precisely).

    3. Re:Why does it have brakes? by Iniamyen · · Score: 3, Funny

      To make it road legal. Damned government regulations.

  4. Rail System by Ashenkase · · Score: 2

    I have always wondered why they don't convert the system to rail. Seems like a much more efficient way to transport a vehicle out to the pad.

    1. Re:Rail System by sackbut · · Score: 2

      What's the cost of maintaining (and inspecting) a rail system in an area prone to hurricanes?

      The Crawler travels a (mostly) gravel road.

      Another interesting fact... The gravel roadbed utilizes a special Tennessee (?) gravel that is much less prone to sparking than the usual stuff.

  5. More grunt! by onyxruby · · Score: 2

    Sweet, it's nice knowing even the boffins at NASA understand that sometimes in life you just need more grunt and a bigger hammer...