![]() "NASA has a great record of adaptive reuse," she said, "which is a preservation strategy." There are no preservation laws, though, that require NASA to hold onto its historic hardware, said Zeringue. That document is now held by the Library of Congress. NASA compiled a Historic American Engineering Record, or HAER, detailing the platforms' construction, engineering and use. "There was an analysis done when they were all considered eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and then in 2010, we followed the federal regulations required by the National Historic Preservation Act to consider the MLPs' demolition," Katherine Zeringue, cultural resources manager at Kennedy, told collectSPACE. With MLP-2 already scrapped and MLP-3 soon to follow, that leaves only MLP-1 (ML-3), which remains in use for servicing the crawlerway between SLS launches. Mobile Launcher-1 (ML-1), which was later redesignated as Mobile Launch Platform-3 (MLP-3), is seen at the moment of ignition of the Saturn V rocket carrying the Apollo 11 crew to the moon. orbiter to Russia's space station Mir in 1995, the first mission to the International Space Station in 1998 and the final space shuttle launch in 2011. The platform was then modified for use with the space shuttle and supported 33 more launches, including the first docking of a U.S. launch that was part of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) flown jointly with the Soviet Union in 1975. ![]() Beyond being used to launch Apollo 8 in 1968 and Apollo 11 in 1969, MLP-3 was also used to support the first flight of a Saturn V rocket in 1967, the three crewed launches to the Skylab workshop in 1973 and the U.S. NASA is aware of the history it is destroying. "It was deemed to be unsafe - too many places for people to get hurt," Giles said. Given the sheer size and mass of the mobile launch platforms - each weighs 8.23 million pounds (3,730 tonnes) and stands 160 feet long by 135 feet wide by 25 feet high (49 by 41 by 7.6 meters) - NASA can only move them using one of their two Apollo-era crawler transporters, and they can only be parked at the VAB, at the pad or the midfield site.Īssuming another site could be identified, NASA looked at whether MLP-3 could be used by the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to give the public access to it as a tourist attraction, but that was not practical. "As soon as Boeing came down and looked over, the first thing they said is that the MLP had to go it was in the way," said Giles.Ī 2009 aerial view of Mobile Launch Platform-3 (MLP-3) as seen parked at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Currently that work is done at the Michoud Assembly Facility outside New Orleans, but by shipping components to Kennedy, it can streamline and expedite production of the towering boosters needed for NASA's Artemis moon program. "Various companies applied for that lease, and it was determined by NASA that it would be given to Boeing," he said.Īs the lead contractor for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, Boeing is planning to use High Bay 2 to build up future SLS core stages. "So last year, probably about halfway through the year, NASA and KSC decided we weren't using all of the VAB, so we were going to lease out certain areas. "It became a simple process of, we ran out of room," said Giles. At that time, NASA's plan was to store MLP-3 in High Bay 2 of the VAB, where it was for about a year. The platform sitting at its park site hinted at its fate, given the same location was used to demolish MLP-2 (ML-2) in 2021. NASA did not announce its decision to discard MLP-3. The steel structure is set to be demolished to make room for NASA's Artemis program hardware. NASA's Mobile Launch Platform-3 (MLP-3) at the midway park site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. ![]() "Right now, they're going through the process of sampling everything and making sure there are no hazardous chemicals left on board before they start the salvage process," Giles said. "MLP-3 has been moved out to the midfield park site and is awaiting demolition by a salvage contractor," John Giles, engineering operations manager for the crawler-transporters and other large equipment in NASA's Exploration Ground Systems program at Kennedy, said in an interview with. Mobile Launch Platform-3 (MLP-3), or Mobile Launcher-1 (ML-1) as it was known when NASA used it for the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 lunar missions more than 50 years ago, is set to be demolished, having recently been moved out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to a nearby yard at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The historic steel platform from which the first astronauts departed Earth to fly around and land on the moon now, itself, only has a limited time left on the planet. ![]()
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