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A bridge linking the Kennedy Space Center to the mainland needs replacement:
In fast-track fashion, traffic engineers hope to finish design work on a future replacement State Road 405 bridge across the Indian River by January 2021.
The aging bridge serves as a critical corridor linking the mainland with Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station — and the bridge must shoulder heavyweight spacecraft payloads and similar freight.
But by 2021, the drawbridge could prove unsafe for spacecraft and other heavy cargo, a NASA engineering study determined. Bridge replacement could cost $140 million — and no construction funding has been earmarked yet, said Bob Kamm, Space Coast Transportation Planning Organization executive director.
Traffic in and around the Kennedy Space Center has increased massively in recent years.
Congressmen want more money to upgrade the facilities at Kennedy Space Center, as well as to provide for the Space Launch System and Orion projects:
A letter sent last month by U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, the Rockledge Republican who sits on the House Space Subcommittee, and co-signed by 10 other members of Florida's delegation, urges $557 million for the exploration ground systems improvements in the 2019 federal budget, and another $17 million for other construction. It also calls for $150 million in 2019 to build a new mobile launcher that could support the SLS rocket for 40 years, a recent NASA policy direction change from plans now seen as problematic to retrofit the current mobile launcher. The letter also calls for another $2.15 billion for the SLS rocket development, and $1.35 billion for the final Orion crew vehicle development.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @11:15AM
This is who and what we have become in America. We build things. Great things. But we do not maintain them, and as such they eventually fall into disrepair and must be replaced. We are driven to create them; they must be born of our efforts. And then they are just one of many that are left to their own devices.
We build them and use them while we ignore maintaining them. Then we replace them.