NASA’s mobile launcher platform 2 – a structure involved in Apollo and Srhythm Shuttle missions – is in the process of being demolished. Incredibly, the space agency is getting rid of the huge platform to make room for parking spaces, like collectSpace reports.
In a matter of weeks, Mobile Launcher-2, or MLP-2, will be gone.
Built more than 50 years ago, NASA’s historic launcher was involved in notable missions like Apollo 12 and 14 (both manned missions to the Moon), Skylab (a precursor to the International Space Station) and each inaugural Srhythm Shuttle launch saved for Columbia. Most doubtfully, MLP-2 was the platform from which the Challenger space shuttle made its final, tragic flight in 1986. In total, the MLP-2 was involved in more than 50 launches from 1968 to 2011. So, yes, a lot of history joined this imposing 160 feet long and 135 foot-wide, 25-foot-tall structure (if you want more details on MLP-2, including a list of all NASA missions that you have been involved in, be sure to check out this extensive fan pwas)
As Robert Pearlman of collectSPACE reports, NASA made the decision to demolish the platform for a reason that is too common.
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Given its history, “the MLP-2 can be expected to be retired as a museum artifact,” wrote Pearlman, or “can continue to serve some purpose, like the other two legacy Apollo and shuttle mobile launch platforms. space did and are doing. ”But, as Scott Tenhoff, project manager for the MLP-2 demolition, told Pearlman, the space agency is getting rid of the platform“ because we’re running out of parking spaces ”.
Oof.
As Pearlman correctly 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 rockets (the last of which never took off). Following Apollo, the structures were transformed, renamed and put to use for the Space Shuttle Program.
But NASA is now entering the Artemis era, and the old-time platform cannot bear the weight of NASA’s megarocket, the Space launch system, nor an umbilical tower to support its launch, according to collectSPACE. For that, NASA completed a new platform in 2018 called ML-1 and started building a second one, to be called ML-2, last year. It’s a lot of huge hardware out there, leading to the decision to dismantle the MLP-2.
Neither MLP-1 or MLP-3 (pictured above) are currently scheduled for demolition, and MLP-1 is being used to prepare trackers (the paths taken by mobile launchers to the launch pad) for the next Space launch system. As NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems explained in a recent tweet, MLP-1 will ensure that the “path is strong enough to support the weight of the next @NASAArtemis I launch ”, which may happen later this year.
The demolition process should take about a month. The contractors doing the work, Frank-Lin Services of Brevard, are using excavators with hydraulic shears to cut the platform section by section until it no longer exists, Tenhoff told collectSPACE.
Before dismantling the Mobile Launcher-2, NASA had asked around if anyone is interested in rescuing pieces of the gigantic structure, including the Smithsonian. Nobody answered.
It’s easy to be cynical about all of this, especially the whole parking thing, but sometimes you just need to move on. Hopefully, some smart people are removing the important parts, like a number 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 show some of its parts. MLP-2 is too iconic to be thrown away and forgotten.