NASA is demolishing its Mobile Launch Platform-2, the storied Kennedy Space Center launch pad from which multiple Apollo and Space Shuttle missions lifted off. Apparently the space agency is short on space as a new mobile launch platform is under construction. From collectSPACE:
[…] The 25-foot-high, 160-foot-long and 135-foot-wide (8 by 50 by 40-m) platform from where the Apollo 9 and Apollo 12 crews left the planet, where the first U.S. space station, Skylab, departed for Earth orbit and from where every space shuttle orbiter but the first (Columbia) began its first mission will soon be no more. Frank-Lin Services of Brevard was contracted by NASA to demolish MLP-2.
"They are going to use excavators with hydraulic shears," [demolition project manager Scott] Tenhoff described. "What they're basically going to do is to cut it down in size, top to bottom from the outside, and just keep trimming it down."
The whole process is expected to take about a month.
According to a statement provided by NASA, an opportunity was extended to outside sources like the Smithsonian to gage interest in keeping any part of MLP-2 for historic preservation purposes. "The agency did not get any responses to the query to preserve any part of the MLP-2, therefore the decision was ultimately made to move on with the demolition," a NASA spokesperson said.
(Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)
image: NASA
