So Now You Know
Kennedy Space Center's "Crawlers" are huge. Each the size of a baseball diamond weighs 3,000 tons; two diesel engines produce a total of 5,500 horsepower; and it takes a crew of more than a dozen to operate. Crawlers even have their own road, about the width of an eight-lane highway.
It has one job: to transport the space shuttle, mounted on a Mobile Launcher Platform -- combined, they weigh 5,500 tons -- from the building where it is assembled in Cape Canaveral to the launching pad. The three-mile trip can take a full day, since the Crawler never goes above 0.95 m.p.h. with the shuttle aboard. Tom Chabrak, 42, drives the Crawler and says it is draining: ''Driving it for one hour seems like driving on the highway for 10 hours.''
While every run involves several engineers on board and six observers walking alongside, there is only one person at the steering wheel, controlling speed and direction. ''It's kind of intimidating the first time you try it, but after a while it becomes second nature,'' Mr. Chabrak said.
On a typical run, the Crawler goes underneath the Mobile Launcher Platform and jacks itself from its regular 20-foot height to about 26 feet to pick up the platform.
The primary challenge in driving the Crawler is to keep it on the road, known as the Crawlerway, which is a sandwich consisting of 8 inches of gravel on top of 4 feet of crushed stone on top of compacted fill.
Source
It has one job: to transport the space shuttle, mounted on a Mobile Launcher Platform -- combined, they weigh 5,500 tons -- from the building where it is assembled in Cape Canaveral to the launching pad. The three-mile trip can take a full day, since the Crawler never goes above 0.95 m.p.h. with the shuttle aboard. Tom Chabrak, 42, drives the Crawler and says it is draining: ''Driving it for one hour seems like driving on the highway for 10 hours.''
While every run involves several engineers on board and six observers walking alongside, there is only one person at the steering wheel, controlling speed and direction. ''It's kind of intimidating the first time you try it, but after a while it becomes second nature,'' Mr. Chabrak said.
On a typical run, the Crawler goes underneath the Mobile Launcher Platform and jacks itself from its regular 20-foot height to about 26 feet to pick up the platform.
The primary challenge in driving the Crawler is to keep it on the road, known as the Crawlerway, which is a sandwich consisting of 8 inches of gravel on top of 4 feet of crushed stone on top of compacted fill.
Source
