Mobile launcher platform

A mobile launcher platform (MLP), also known as mobile launch platform, is a structure used to support a large multistage space vehicle which is assembled (stacked) vertically in an integration facility (e.g. the Vehicle Assembly Building) and then transported by a crawler-transporter (CT) to a launch pad.

The use of mobile launcher platform is a part of the Integrate-Transfer-Launch (ITL) system, which involves vertical assembly, transport, and launch of rockets.

These 9.4 m (31 ft) masts contained the feed lines through which liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) were loaded into the shuttle's external fuel tank, as well as electrical hookups and flares that were used to burn off any ambient hydrogen vapors at the launch site immediately prior to Main Engine start.

The Space Shuttle assembly was held to the MLP at eight holddown points using large studs, four on the aft skirt of each Solid Rocket Booster.

Immediately before SRB ignition, frangible nuts attached to the top of these studs were detonated, releasing the Shuttle assembly from the platform.

Each crawler weighs about 6 million pounds (2,700 tonnes) unloaded, has a maximum speed of about 1 mile per hour (1.6 km/h) loaded, and has a leveling system designed to keep the launch vehicle vertical while negotiating the 5 percent grade leading to the top of the launch pad.

[5] The MLPs were designed as part of NASA's strategy for vertical assembly and transport of space vehicles.

Vertical assembly allows the preparation of the spacecraft in a ready-for-launch position, and avoids the additional step of lifting or craning a horizontally-assembled vehicle onto the launchpad (as the engineers of the Soviet space program chose to do).

[11] NASA stated that re-conditioning of the crawlerway will be required periodically in the future, and MLP-1 will be retained for that purpose.

Prior to the scrapping of the LUT in 2004, there was a campaign to rebuild and preserve it as a memorial to Project Apollo.

[17] The crew access arm is preserved at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on the upper level of the gift shop.

The LUT and Milkstool were dismantled and placed into storage, and the base of the launch platform was modified to accommodate the locations of engines on the shuttle.

[10] Usage of MLP-3 to launch the OmegA rocket was granted to Orbital ATK (later bought out by Northrop Grumman) following discussions in 2016,[19] and later formalized through a Reimbursable Space Act Agreement in August 2019.

Following the cancellation of OmegA in September 2020, work began to demolish the half-completed launch tower.

Since the cancellation of the program in 2010, ML-1 was converted for the Space Launch System Block 1, with various phases of construction between 2013 and 2018.

In June 2019, NASA awarded a contract for the design and construction of the Mobile Launcher-2 (ML-2) for SLS Block 1B.

The rocket is stacked on its MLP in the 280-foot-tall (85.4 m) Vertical Integration Facility (VIF), and is then rolled-out over 600 yards (550 m) to the launch pad.

The VLP (Vulcan Launch Platform)[28] stands 183 ft (56 m) tall, and when complete will weigh 1.3 million pounds (590 tonnes).

Six 12-foot-high (3.7 m) towers known as "rainbirds" spray water over the MLP and into the flame deflector trenches below it, absorbing acoustic waves.

[33] This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.