NASA Selling Apollo/Space Shuttle Launch Pads

Rolling back the years... (Image: NASA)

NASA announced that it is seeking bidders for its three mobile launcher platforms. The 3700-ton hunks of steel were used at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to ferry large rockets to the launch zone and serve as launch pads.

The two-story structures contain a maze of pathways, plumbing and electrical cabling used to assist launches and safely vent rocket exhaust. They carried Saturn V rockets during the Apollo era, then were modified for the space shuttles.

With the shuttles now museum artifacts, NASA is out of uses for the platforms. Its next big rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), is due to fly in 2017 and will use a newer platform built for the Ares rocket, a large launch vehicle that was part of a now-cancelled program to send humans back to the moon.

More - Link >>> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24104-nasa-seeks-takers-for-moonmission-launch-pads.html#.Ui5c6EqyKHt

Source: New Scientist Magazine.

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