Machine: NASA's Crawler-TransporterCost: $14,000,000
Claim to Fame: Largest self powered tracked vehicle in the world
This machine has 8 tracks (two at each corner). Each track has 57 shoes, and each shoe weighs 1,984 lbs! That's 113,088 lbs per track just for the shoes!! That's a grand total of 904,704 lbs worth of track shoes. That's 452 tons JUST for the track shoes. The entire transporter weighs 6 MILLION pounds (3000 tons)!
Moving on.
The height of the platform is adjustable from 20 to 26 feet above the ground, and it can tilt to keep the rocket vertical even up the 5% grade to the launch pad. It measures 131' long by 114' wide.
It's powered in a similar fashion to locomotives by a diesel-electric system. It is driven by 16 traction motors which get their electricity from four 1,000 kW generators driven by two 2,750 hp diesel engines. So basically, to move this behemoth, you have two HUGE diesel engines driving 4 massive generators making electricity for 16 electric motors!
On top of all that you have two 1,065 hp diesel engines driving two 750 kW generators which are used for jacking the platform, steering, lighting, and ventilating. There are also two 150 kW generators which are available to power the Mobile Launcher Platform. That's a grand total of 4 diesel engines making a combined 7,630 hp! They power a total of 6 generators which create 5,500 kW of electricity!! That's enough to power around 5,000 homes!
In order to generate that kind of power the crawler burns 150 gallons of diesel fuel per mile! It's tank holds 5,000 gallons giving it a range of just over 33 miles on a tank! The maximum speed of crawler is about 1 mph loaded or 2 mph unloaded. It takes the vehicle between 5 and 8 hours to transport the shuttle from it's assembly area to one of two launch pads at the Kennedy Space Center.
NASA currently owns two of these machines and they have traveled over 2,500 miles since they were put into operation in 1965. That means they've been in service over 40 years!!
What an engineering marvel!
5 comments:
Wow! That is some machine!
A woman's dream...all those shoes! (not mine though...I never was the typical female shopper)
actually I have to dispute their claim to fame.... have you ever seen the Krupp track excavator?
it is known as the Ulitmate Earth Move
it makes the NASA rig look like one of its wheels
it is 311' tall, 705' long and weighs 45,500 tons
cost $100 million dollars
5 years to design and mfg
5 years to assembly
takes 5 men to operate it
moves on 12 tracks-- 8 in the frt and 4 in the rear
can remove over 76,455 cubic meters of earth a day (that is 100,000 large dump trks at 40 yds each)
i've got a slideshow on it that i can email if you want it
Mick:
The German Bagger 288 excavator is now the largest tracked vehicle in the world. While it is larger than the crawler-transporter, it is externally-powered and is more correctly described as a mining machine which can be moved. The crawler-transporters are self-powered, load-carrying vehicles, and they remain the world's largest self-powered tracked vehicles.
Mick: But I'd still love that slide show if you wanna email it.
sorry... for some reason i'm not a genius today ha! can't find your email address
email me at mick@nescosales.com and I'll send on to you
thks
by the way
congrats on the wedding!
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