NASA Upgrades Giant Rocket-Carrying Vehicle

For five decades a 6.3-million pound behemoth of a machine, like a baseball diamond perched atop tank treads, has moved NASA rockets from their hangars to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Now the two Crawler-Transporters, stalwart workhorses of the American space program, is getting its first major upgrade. Maxing out at just a mile […]

For five decades a 6.3-million pound behemoth of a machine, like a baseball diamond perched atop tank treads, has moved NASA rockets from their hangars to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Now the two Crawler-Transporters, stalwart workhorses of the American space program, is getting its first major upgrade.

Maxing out at just a mile an hour, the crawlers hauled the iconic Saturn V used in the Apollo missions on the eight-hour trip from the vehicle assembly building. They carried Skylab, the first US space station. They moved every space shuttle on all 135 missions. Not bad for a machine that debuted the year after the Ford Mustang. “How many Mustangs do you see on the road today,” says John Giles, the deputy project manager for the crawlers. “They’ve all gone by the wayside.” But his crawler-transporters are still at work.

At least they will be---after some tinkering. They’ll get new, stronger steel, and new roller bearings, brakes, and gearboxes. NASA engineers will replace the hydraulic system that lifts and lowers the platform when the rockets get loaded on. By the time the work is done at the end of the year, the agency will have put $50 million into the machines.

But if the space program goes as planned, it’ll be worth it. NASA hopes to use its new Space Launch System to rocket crewed Orion spacecraft to space, maybe even to Mars. And the SLS is the most powerful rocket ever built. To carry it, the souped-up crawler will have to be able to handle 18 million pounds, 6 million more than before. And eventually other rocket launch groups, like United Launch Alliance, might also use the crawler system. “It’s not like what it used to be in the past,” says Mary Hanna, the crawler-transport system’s project manager. “We’re posturing to be a multiuse spaceport.”

One thing that probably won’t change much is the ride itself. It’s slow enough that at first it barely looks like it’s moving. But once it starts down the roadway—paved with rocks to withstand the weight—the crawler with a rocket on top still looks like an engineering marvel.