Want a portable piece of history that helped send astronauts to the moon? You better have a powerful pickup truck.
NASA this week announced that it is seeking bidders for its three mobile launcher platforms. The 3700-tonne hunks of steel were used at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to ferry large rockets to the launch zone and serve as launch pads.
The two-story structures contain a maze of pathways, plumbing and electrical cabling used to assist launches and safely vent rocket exhaust. They carried Saturn V rockets during the Apollo era, then were modified for the space shuttles.
With the shuttles now museum artefacts, NASA is out of uses for the platforms. Its next big rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), is due to fly in 2017 and will use a newer platform built for the Ares rocket, a large launch vehicle that was part of a now-cancelled programme to send humans back to the moon.
"That mobile launcher will undergo some minor modification to support the SLS programme," says NASA spokesperson Tracy Young.
A watery end?
The historic platforms could be made into museum pieces, but sheer logistics mean that none will go to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC: "Although their historic value is without question, there is no practical way to physically move one of them to the DC area," says museum curator Paul Ceruzzi. Another option might be to place one of the platforms under the unflown Saturn V rocket currently on display at the Kennedy Space Center, he adds.
NASA would ideally like the platforms to be reused by a commercial launch company, such as SpaceX, which is currently bidding to take over launch complex 39A at Kennedy. The agency is also open to plans to turn them into artificial reefs or oil rigs. Failing that, NASA hopes someone will pay to take them away for recycling.
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