NASA Launcher Mobile-2 platform – a structure involved in Apollo and Srhythm SHuttle missions – is being shot down. Incredibly, the space agency is freeing itself from the massive platform to make room for parking spaces, such as collectSpace rEPORTS.
In a few weeks, Mobile Launcher-2 or MLP-2 will no longer exist.
Built more than Fifty years ago, NASA’s historic launcher was involved in notable missions such as Apollo 12 and 14 (both manned missions to the moon), Skylab (a forerunner of the International Space Station), and in each inaugural Srhythm SHuttle launch saves for Columbia. More dubiously, the MLP-2 was the platform from which the Challenger shuttle reached the end, tragic flight in 1986. In total, MLP-2 has been involved in over 50 launches from 1968 to 2011. So yes, a lot of history has approached this 160-foot, 135-foo long hulkinglat, 25-foot-structure (if you want more details about MLP-2, including a list of each NASA mission she was involved in, be sure to check this extension ventilator page).
Like Robert Pearlman of collectSPACE rEPORTS, NASA decided to demolish the platform for too trivial a reason.
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Given its history, “one might expect the MLP-2 to be withdrawn as a museum artifact,” Pearlman wrote, or “it could continue to serve a specific purpose, as do the other two platforms.” Apollo’s old mobile launch and shuttle do. “But, as Scott Tenhoff, project manager for the MLP-2 demolition, told Pearlman, the space agency is getting rid of the platform” because we don’t have parking spaces anymore. “
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 missiles (the last of which never took flight). After Apollo, the structures were transformed, renamed and put into use for the Space Shuttle Program.
But NASA is now entering the Artemis era, and the former platform cannot bear the weight of NASA’s future megarocket, Space launch system, no umbilical tower to support its launch, according to collectSPACE. To this end, NASA has completed a new platform in 2018 appointed ML-1 and began the construction of a second, to be named ML-2, last year. It’s a lot of huge hardware, which leads to the decision to disassemble MLP-2.
Neither are MLP-1 or MLP-3 (pictured above) currently provided for demolition and MLP-1 is currently used to prepare crawler paths (paths taken by mobile launchers to the launch pad) for future Space launch system. As NASA Exploration Ground Systems explained in a recent article tweet, MLP-1 will ensure that “the path is strong enough to support the weight for the future @NASAArtemis I’m launching “, which could happen later this year.
The demolition process will 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 longer, Tenhoff told collectSPACE.
Before dismantling Mobile Launcher-2, NASA had he asked around if anyone were interested in saving bits of the giant structure, including the Smithsonian. Nobody answered.
It’s easy to be cynical about all this, especially with parking, but sometimes you have to move on. We hope that some smart people bring out important pieces, such as 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 present some of its parts. The MLP-2 is far too iconic to be thrown away and forgotten.