NASA Awards Contract to Modify Mobile Launcher
“NASA has awarded a contract to J.P. Donovan Construction Inc. of Rockledge, Fla., to modify the mobile launcher that will enable the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket to send humans to an asteroid, Mars and other new destinations in the solar system. The work under this firm fixed-price $20.7 million contract will begin in June and be completed in 18 months.”
– NASA KSC Solicitation: Construction of Constellation Crew Launch Vehicle Mobile Launcher (2007)
– NASA Awards Contract for Ares I Mobile Launcher (2008)
– Space Shuttle Program Hands over Launch Platform to Constellation (2009)
– NASA OIG: NASA’s Plans to Modify the Ares I Mobile Launcher in Support of the Space Launch System (2012)

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

7 replies on “Modifying The Modified Mobile Launcher”

  2. Does the SLS design prohibit horizontal integration? EELV heavies and even Energia Buran could be rolled out to the pad by rail. Or is the mobile launcher more a consequence of side-mount SRBs get stacked in the VAB? NASA SLA design within the 1970s constraints of a 21st Century Launch Complex?

    1. I think vertical integration can be done quite efficiently as shown by Cx-41 (Atlas V) and Jiuquan (Long March 2F/G). It just can’t be done efficiently at LC-39, because efficiency was not a criterion when LC-39 was designed.

      A launch vehicle and its GSE are an integrated whole, and to shift from horizontal to vertical integration or vice versa, short of a complete redesign of the launch vehicle, would be expensive and unproductive. It would be much cheaper to build another pad designed around the needs of the launch vehicle..

      AFAIK horizontal integration has never been used for segmented solid fuel boosters.

      1. Vulture 4 says: “to shift from horizontal to vertical integration or vice versa, short of
        a complete redesign of the launch vehicle, would be expensive and
        unproductive.”

        Uhm…what metal has been cut for the first launcher, so far? This is a paper rocket at this point.

        A complete redesign isn’t that far-fetched.

        Let’s be honest, though. Who doesn’t think this is going the the shelf next to the VentureStar and Ares and so many others?

  5. Well we knew it needed more work. It was only completely ready for Ares-I I believe.

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