I am still filming Skeptologists, but for now, feast your eyes on these way cool pictures of the external tank of the Shuttle being delivered to Kennedy Space Center. Down lower on that page are awesome shots of the Shuttle orbiter Discovery being refitted for launch after landing.
Tip o’ the spacesuit visor to BABloggees James Jones, Brent Bender, and Tim Farley.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
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April 4th, 2008 at 8:48 am
that it just way, so completely cool.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:09 am
REALLY cool pics of some seriously cool toys!
April 4th, 2008 at 9:11 am
It’s wacky to see the shuttle dangling from the ceiling like a model airplane. I’ve known how the whole thing is assembled for years now, but it still astounds me.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:14 am
I could totally lift that.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Very cool photos! Thanks for the link, Phil.
BTW: For some reason, I get a little queezy looking at the shuttle dangling like that.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Thank you! Thank you for the link!
April 4th, 2008 at 9:42 am
As much I as I think of our manned space program as politics being labelled as science, I still can’t deny the coolness of it all. I hope to witness a launch someday.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:50 am
That sequence has the feel of clicking through a View-Master reel. I still have the reels I got for Christmas in the late ’60s, with images from the American space program.
But considering the theme of the pics, I have but one thing to say: “In Soviet Russia, the payload mounts YOU!”
April 4th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Okay, you take that end, and move to your right-no left! Okay, now I’ll lift… and step towards me… slow down, slow down! Okay, now turn it counter-clockwise… Counter! Oh, yeah, clockwise from your perspective, you’re right, sorry. Okay… Dang. Okay, back up… Wait, put it down. Well how did we get it into the house if we can’t get it out? No, stop, you’re scratching the door frame. Stop! Try removing that cushion. What if we stand it on end? Oh, are the legs detachable? Well let’s pick it up and we’ll try it again. Wait, the dog’s in the way.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Those are really really cool pictures.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:05 am
This may be a total n00b question, but does it stay on the crawler for launch or does the crawler get out from under it first? I assume that once it leaves the vab, it’s on it’s launch surface, right? (The launch pad pad as it were.)
April 4th, 2008 at 10:11 am
MikeG: Crawler sets the MLP (platform under the shuttle) down at the pad and then drives back.
By the way, anyone happen to know when they’re stacking the next vehicle? I’d really like to get over to the VAB sometime while the operation is going on. I’ve seen SRBs done but not the orbiter.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:44 am
What’s also amazing is all the weight that is involved. Imagine how heavy the fuel tank must be when full, and yet it’s only attached at several detachable points to the boosters and the shuttle. It’s amazing how something can look weak yet be structurally strong.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Nothing to it is there? Just throw a few tons of stuff this way and that, bolt it together, and you’ve got yourself a rocket ship. Absolutely marvelous!
April 4th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Those photos really are making the rounds these days. They certainly are awesome.
Take a look at the same ‘room’ in action as Apollo 11 was being assembled in the VAB
BTW, that’s my Dad in 69-HC-718 atop Service Arm 9.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Those are some seriously cool pictures! :O
Thanks!
April 4th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Spiv, thanks. That was something I have always wondered. I assume the MLP is something really creative like “Mobile Launch Platform.”
(after a little googling: Yup! )
April 4th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Spiv, thanks. That was something I have always wondered. I assume the MLP is something really creative like “Mobile Launch Platform.”
After a bit of googling, that’s exactly what they call it. It’s reused after each flight (there are a few of them) and they are the same ones used (modified for the shuttle’s exhaust) during the Apollo launches. Cool!
There’s a comment in moderation, tagged as spam with a link, so sorry if this is repetitive.
April 4th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Thank you! Wonderful pictures! It’s either The Land of the Giant Machines or The Land of the Really Tiny People.
April 4th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I was living in Orlando at the time of the first Shuttle night launch. It’s about 40 miles from the house I was in and KSC. My brother and I were standing in our front lawn listening to the countdown on TV. When they reached zero the entire eastern horizon LIT UP, like instant dawn. We watched exhaust flame climb up, turn from yellow to blue-white when the solid rockets were released, and were still clearly tracking it when the announcer said that it was now crossing the latitude of New Jersey! Certainly the most dramatic example of human engineering I’ve ever experienced. If you ever have a chance to see a launch, do not miss it.
April 4th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
it looks like a a shark that was caught and hung for pictures.
April 4th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
[...] Recebi o link em uma mensagem de e-mail de um amigo que acompanha um forum da BMW e poucos minutos depois vi a mesma notícia aqui. [...]
April 4th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Space Dinosaur! I think the appropriate place to hang this might be the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum…It’s time for the next generation of spacecraft…..one place to see them would be here:
http://www.scaled.com/index.html
(cool pix though!
April 4th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I remember watching the first John Glenn launch, the launches of the very first orbiting-only space craft and then the continuing launches of the Apollo series and then the first Shuttle launch – but all on TV. I always thought that I had a small part in the space program because my taxes, even though minuscule in amount, helped to pay for those flights. I also wondered if I’d ever see a launch in person. It is now nearing the end of the Shuttle program and I’ve yet to get to Florida to see one of those craft leave the planet, and it doesn’t look now as if I’ll ever get to do so. But I still think the manned programs were worth supporting and I hope our nation continues in this human-piloted reach for space, because I don’t believe that robotic exploration has the imaginative spark that we bring to a human activity.
Will. M
April 4th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
That is such an impressive sight. I’d love to be able to witness a launch live someday. Now, I could be wrong, but I believe the VAB stands for Vehicle Assembly Building, right? Thanks for sharing the pictures.
April 4th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
>I believe the VAB stands for Vehicle Assembly Building, right?<
Correct. Used to be Vertical Assembly Building, but the name changed for shuttle operations, more aptly describing its use but by all means preserving the acronym!
April 4th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I just had a nerd-gasm. Doubly so because I saw the Dirty Jobs where Mike Rowe had to help clean the MLP.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
That was awesome!
Back in 1994 I took a tour of the space center and we saw the tank on the barge.
April 5th, 2008 at 4:09 am
[...] by marko as Images Phil Plait of Badastronomy.Com has discovered cool shuttle pictures. I read Phil’s blog pretty often as he writes pretty [...]
April 5th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Superb pictures. My only comment would be that I miss the palm trees and the pool that slides back… Thanks Phil for the link. I’m very I got to see these. The scale of what is being done is quite boggling.
Out of interest, does anyone know how deep the foundations had to be for the road to the launch site? Just curious.
April 5th, 2008 at 7:44 am
(insert word “glad” after very)
April 5th, 2008 at 8:03 am
In case anyone is curious I found this. 7.6 metres (that’s approximately 24.93408 ft… ok 25 feet
)
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-4204/ch11-6.html
No wonder the shuttle moves so slow, the crawlerway must have its own gravity!
I do realise that I was probably the only one wondering about the road. It’s like pointing at the moon and me looking at your finger!
April 5th, 2008 at 8:29 am
I especially liked the pictures of the barge bringing in the ET and the one of the SRBs poking out of the ocean. Many of those I’ve seen in one way or another, but they are all very good quality. Thanks.
April 5th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Amazing! I knew those things were big, but until seeing these pictures, I did not appreciate just how huge they are. Those people look like Lilliputians in comparison.
April 5th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
There is nothing special or rare about these photos. They are the same shots available regularly, every mission, in the media gallery:
http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/index.cfm
April 5th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
The whole thing is clearly a hoax! I can’t see any stars in the pictures.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Wrote Will. M on 04 Apr 2008 at 3:15 pm :
“I remember watching the first John Glenn launch, the launches of the very first orbiting-only space craft and then the continuing launches of the Apollo series and then the first Shuttle launch – but all on TV. I always thought that I had a small part in the space program because my taxes, even though minuscule in amount, helped to pay for those flights. I also wondered if I’d ever see a launch in person. It is now nearing the end of the Shuttle program and I’ve yet to get to Florida to see one of those craft leave the planet, and it doesn’t look now as if I’ll ever get to do so. But I still think the manned programs were worth supporting and I hope our nation continues in this human-piloted reach for space, because I don’t believe that robotic exploration has the imaginative spark that we bring to a human activity.
Will. M”
I’ll second all that. Except as an Aussie my taxes don’t hep pay for tehspaec progarm -sorry – I wish they would! Oh, & I’m too young to have seen the Mercury flights, Gemini flights and Apollo flights too…
I do recall as a very little kid – about 8 or so – staying up late to see the very first launch of the space shuttle ‘Columbia.’ It was all white incl. the External Tank, so cool and futuristsic back then – a real spaceplane! Loved the shuttle then and depsite all that’s happened since, I still love it now .. Even if it hasn’t quite lived up to expectations.
I think from a global perspective the space program esp. Apollo was the very best thing that the United States of America has ever done – & I wish they’d get back to doing more in space; both manned and unmanned, near Earth space and Lunar colony building & first human Martian expedition and to the asterioids as well… There is so much potential for us to do such awe-inspiring things. Just wish we’d do it.
BTW Will M : Did you see Glenn’s second flight – aboard the shuttle?
I’m halfway through reading John Glenn’s autobiography ‘John Glenn : A Memoir’ (random House, 1999.) right now.
Thanks BA for the awesome photos!
April 5th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Wrote Buzz Parsec on 05 Apr 2008 at 6:16 pm :
“The whole thing is clearly a hoax! I can’t see any stars in the pictures.
The stars are the humans responsible for designing, building, operatingand flying the Shuttle , mate!
PS. Sorry about the typos in my firt post above – wish we could edit here!
April 5th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
nice veiws I like that i coold see how the rock was asimbaled
April 5th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Interesting….I have had these pictures for over a month now, if not longer. My father works in aerospace and sent me those, they are in a Powerpoint format.
April 6th, 2008 at 3:32 am
Yeah, that’s a nice set of pics. Aren’t human beings wonderfully inventive?
April 6th, 2008 at 7:17 am
That photo of the two SRBs is more awesome than I thought upon reading the description here. They landed miles apart, but one migrated to the other overnight and yet they didn’t touch each other. How convenient for the retrievers.
April 6th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
The world’s biggest drop tank!
I’ve seen this before; a friend of mine sent it around in PowerPoint format. I think that was how it started out. (Same captions and everything.) There are a few misidentified pictures (two pics ostensibly of the payload canister are actually of the real payload bay, on the pad), but they’re all cool.
Random factoid: via hydraulic jacks in each corner of its top platform, the Crawler-Transporter can keep the stack vertical to within less than a degree. It is said that even in the Apollo-Saturn days, the tip of the lighting rod on top of the Mobile Launcher never wobbled by more than a foot, even during the climb up the 5% slope ramp at the pad.
Second random factoid: the entire “stack” (Orbiter, ET, and SRBs) is held onto the Mobile Launch Platform by exactly eight massive bolts, four in each SRB. Oh, the MLP is connected to the SRBs, the SRBs are connected to the ET, the ET is connected to the Orbiter, oh hear the word of the Lord.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Out of mild curiosity – what are the advantages/disadvantages to assembling the shuttle/rocket vertically, and then wheeling it out to the launch pad?
Most of the US rockets seem to be assembled this way, whereas the Russians assemble them horizontally (even the Buran/Energia was horizontal), wheel them out flat, and then erect them on the pad.
Not sure how the French and Chinese set them up.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:12 am
LC: couple reasons:
1: is lift capacity. The weight of the things used in the shuttles is mind boggling, and the VAB cranes would be hopeless to lift and rotate an entire stack to vertical. Even a single SRB couldn’t be done in this fasion, they’re quite dense when loaded.
2: design. Components like the SRBs are built in segments for safety purposes as well as weight, so there are many joints between sections. These joints are built to take a vertical load, but a lateral one on that magnitude would damage the hardware.
3: and probably the real reason behind some the design stuff that lead to the above, is that it had to all work on a modified MLP from the previous rockets (budget), and the russians have a special platform with a mechanism to rotate the assembly to vertical at the pad. Honestly I think we’ve got it right after all, we get easier access to many of the systems, and don’t have to refurbish a rotating mechanism (or hope there isn’t a problem with it when you get to the pad).
We already had a building where we could do such things, and the russians had to design around not having such a resource.
BTW, the russians move their stuff out to the pad on tracks (rails), which we had looked at doing but couldn’t due to pad elevation. Instead we have the crawlers, which are sooo much cooler.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Thanks.
So it’s the SRBs and legacy designs which defined it.
I never liked the idea of the SRB (a giant “light and pray” firecracker) but I understand they have a far greater thrust/weight ratio than an equivalent liquid rocket so they’re a necessary evil.
And the crawlers are indeed impressive – seeing that little ant figure scuttling around under the crawler gives a very poignant view of size. Still, I remember some old archival footage of the old Soviet R-7 series rolling out of the shop – looking down the massive exhaust nozzles of the boosters also gave a good impression.
But regardless of whose they are – they’re always impressive machines to see.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Why is the platform raised, then? Couldn’t you do the same thing
more cheaply with excavation, leaving the pad at ground level? Am I
missing something?
April 8th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Two actual reasons not to put it lower down: First, the sound pressure coming off the shuttle is really something astounding. We have all sorts of cool vibration testing equipment here to try and simulate the abuse that pad and flight parts will undergo during a launch (and occasionally break stuff in glorious fashion in the attempt). Placing the pad lower gives less free-air for the pressure to disperse in, and would make that job much harder. We also need space for the water system to drain off, which also servers the purpose of vibration dampening. Second, it’s Florida, in the swamp, if you dig much more than about 5 feet down you hit water. This can be overcome, but with much expense.
I’m really not sure what the Russian approach is on this, if someone knows I’d love to hear it. Maybe more water or something to do with the russian landscape? Maybe just less expectation for everything to survive launch after launch?
April 9th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Poking through the pictures of Baikonur, it seems while the Russian pads are at ground level, but they cheat by digging out the ground under the platform forming the blast trench.
Also as mentioned Bailonur isnt in the middle of a swamp so the water table is a lot lower hence they can dig down with this method.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikonur_r7_1.html
April 9th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
LC and Spiv – From the pictures I’ve seen of Baikonur, it looks like the pads are built at the top of a cliff or flat-topped hill, so they didn’t have to do much if any excavation, just extend a pier-like structure horizontally (on pillars) a short distance off the edge of the cliff and put the launch pad at the end. Then level the top of the hill between the assembly building and the pad, and lay down railroad tracks between the two. Since they are way above sea level, at the top of a hill, and in a desert, they don’t have to worry about the water table. BTW, yesterday’s Soyuz launch used the same pad as Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok 1, which I think was the same pad used by Sputnik 1.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:31 am
“similar” pictures of buran and energija:
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/11/rare-photos-of-russian-buran-space.html
May 7th, 2008 at 12:26 am
The link in the original post is not working
Here is a working link with the cool pictures
http://www.popgive.com/2008/04/space-shuttle-processing-rarely-seen-by.html
June 26th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
[...] the An-225, constructed in the Ukraine in 1988.It was designed as a cargo ship to carry the Russian Buran Space Shuttle. There were only 2 of its kind built and they are still available to carry oversize cargo and [...]