NASA now demolishing the obsolete mobile launch platform used during Apollo
The second of three mobile launch platforms that were used during the Apollo program to transport the Saturn-5 rocket to its launchpad but are all obsolete and no longer in use is finally being demolished for salvage.
The first has already been scrapped, while the third is still in use for “servicing the crawlerway between SLS launches.”
NASA has been storing the platform in the Vehicle Assembly Building, but there was no longer room there, with Boeing taking over more space for assembling SLS core stages. The platform itself was deemed unsafe for display at any museum, with the cost of making it safe too high.
Better to salvage it than have it sit in the way of future space operations. After all, when you get down to it, it is simply some metal and hardware. The history was accomplished by the humans who built it, and who would be appalled if later generations used their work as a club to prevent new achievements in space.
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In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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The second of three mobile launch platforms that were used during the Apollo program to transport the Saturn-5 rocket to its launchpad but are all obsolete and no longer in use is finally being demolished for salvage.
The first has already been scrapped, while the third is still in use for “servicing the crawlerway between SLS launches.”
NASA has been storing the platform in the Vehicle Assembly Building, but there was no longer room there, with Boeing taking over more space for assembling SLS core stages. The platform itself was deemed unsafe for display at any museum, with the cost of making it safe too high.
Better to salvage it than have it sit in the way of future space operations. After all, when you get down to it, it is simply some metal and hardware. The history was accomplished by the humans who built it, and who would be appalled if later generations used their work as a club to prevent new achievements in space.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Ha!
The ghost of Charlie Bell is moaning.
Charlie bought the LC39 Apollo tower when the Apollo program was shut down for scrap. Charlie was “notorious “for buying stuff from NASA for his space museum business and his own peculiar interests.
NASA had to pay him a lot of money to buy it back when Apollo/Soyuz was approved.
I’m sure some of the readers here know a couple of other stories about Mr. Bell.
NASA was so peeved about this that when they eventually took down the tower they didn’t scrap it and set it in sections in a field out behind the old HQ building. After decades of sitting there, NASA had to remediate the soil because of lead contamination from the paint when they eventually disposed of it after Charlie passed on.
You can see the top of the tower and the crane at the Saturn Exhibition building.
You can’t save everything, eventually you have to clean out the basement. That said, there is probably some money to be made cutting out some interesting pieces into keychain sized bits and selling them off as collectables.
pawn: Sounds like a man worth doing a biography and movie script about.
Btw, I have seen equipment still in military manufacturing inventory, tooling, from pre 1933. At a site that made cannon for George Washington and which is still making cannon for tanks, although based on a German WWII design.
Nothing is sacred to New Spacers.