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Countdown! NASA Launch Vehicles and Facilities
PMS 018-B
October 1991
Section 3
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After the Space Shuttle launches, the two
solid rocket boosters burn out and jettison about 2 minutes into the
flight. Huge parachutes lower them into the Atlantic Ocean where special
recovery vessels retrieve and tow them back to a dock at Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station.
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The area in and
around Hangar AF and the hangar building itself together comprise
the Solid Rocket Booster Disassembly Facility. Special handling
equipment located behind Hangar AF lifts the solid rocket
boosters from the water. There, they undergo an initial washing.
Each booster disassembles into four main segments, and aft
skirt and forward skirt assemblies. The main casing segments
are taken back to Launch Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center,
cleaned, and placed on railroad cars for shipment to the manufacturer
and reloading with propellant.
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Refurbishment and subassembly of inert
solid rocket booster hardware, including the forward and aft
skirt assemblies, takes place in this facility, located south
of the Vehicle Assembly Building. This complex has five buildings
-- manufacturing, engineering and administration, service,
aft skirt or hot fire testing, and the chiller facility. The
three-level manufacturing building includes an automated checkout
system, an 80-by-200-foot (24-by-61-meter) high bay, two 15-ton
(14-metric-ton) bridge cranes, and three overhead gantry robots;
the latter are among the world's largest.
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| Located north of the Vehicle Assembly Building,
this facility receives new and reloaded solid rocket booster
segments shipped by rail from the manufacturer. The complex
includes a processing building and two surge buildings. Inspection,
rotation and aft booster buildup occur in the processing building.
Completed aft skirt assemblies from the Assembly and Refurbishment
Facility integrate here with the booster aft segments. The two
nearby surge buildings are for storage of solid rocket booster
segments. They remain here until moved to the Vehicle Assembly
Building for integration with other flight-ready booster components. |
| Originally built to process parachutes used
in the Gemini manned space program, this facility in the Industrial Area
has been modified for the Space Shuttle. The two vessels which recover the
solid rocket boosters also retrieve the parachutes from the ocean, hauling
them in on large reels. These reels are taken to this facility, where the
parachutes are washed, dried, and stored in canisters for eventual reuse. |
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The solid rocket booster segments are
integrated here into complete flight sets and mated with the orbiter and
external tank before being moved to the launch pad.
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