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NASA's Crawler Transporter 2 was originally designed to carry Saturn V rockets during the Apollo program nearly 60 years ago. The aging giant recently got a much-needed upgrade for supporting the Artemis SLS megarocket, beating its twin vehicle for a world record.
On Wednesday, Guinness World Records presented NASA teams at the Kennedy Space Center with a certificate confirming that, at a whopping 6.65 million pounds (3 million kilograms), Crawler Transporter 2 is the world's heaviest self-powered vehicle, NASA announced in a statement.
"Anyone with an interest in machinery can appreciate the engineering marvel that is the crawler transporter," Shawn Quinn, program manager of Exploration Ground Systems, said in the statement. [...]
"NASA's crawlers were incredible pieces of machinery when they were designed and built in the 1960s," John Giles, NASA's Crawler Element Operations manager, said in the statement. "And to think of the work they've accomplished for Apollo and shuttle and now Artemis throughout the last six decades makes them even more incredible."
Due to how heavy the Crawler Transport is, the vehicle essentially crawls its way to the launch pad. It takes about eight to 12 hours for the rocket-carrying vehicle to drive the 4.2 miles (6.7 kilometers) from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad, going at a slow and steady speed of one mile per hour (1.6 kilometers per hour). It could take you a shorter time to walk that distance by foot.
Here's a crawler-transporter fact sheet [pdf]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday April 04, @03:49AM (3 children)
Perhaps the heaviest self-propelled ground vehicle. Some ships are much heavier.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04, @08:06AM
You should tone your language down. Talking about things being "heavy" or "heavier" is likely to offend some people.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by richtopia on Tuesday April 04, @05:13PM (1 child)
TI-class supertanker is around 500 million kg fully laden, compared to the Crawler at 3 million kg. I'm not sure if the crawler's statistic includes cargo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-class_supertanker [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday April 04, @06:23PM
Perhaps, but I want to know about the flight capabilities of the African Swallow. Can it indeed carry a coconut? Otherwise, how would one bang two halves together.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Funny) by istartedi on Tuesday April 04, @05:25AM (3 children)
But does it have blinding headlights, and can it tailgate me at 80 mph? Most importantly, does it come in white and have an infotainment system? No? Weak. /sarcasm.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04, @09:16AM
I want to see a video of it rolling coal at the lights.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday April 04, @12:07PM (1 child)
Can someone who can work with the units used (gallons, miles, whatever) figure out what its fuel efficiency is in L/100km? I bet it'd get into the record books for that as well.
Current record holder that I know of is the M60 tank, which used as much as 1L per 100m. That's not 100km, that's 100m, i.e. 0.1km.
(Score: 2, Informative) by UncleBen on Tuesday April 04, @05:46PM
1 gal per 32 feet.
Gal=3.8 L, 32'=9.75m 4L per 10M? So approx 1 liter per 3 meters.
Given the scope of the task, this seems pretty efficient. Each tread link weighs 1 ton, the vehicle's structure is incredibly stiff, and it must manage all axes accelerations to such a fine degree that it blows my mind. And remember it has to pick up and place it's payload with sub-millimeter positional accuracy.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Immerman on Tuesday April 04, @01:30PM
So NASA buys a record-breakingly huge (and presumably, expensive) custom transporter even larger than the one for Saturn V, in order to transport the smaller and lighter SLS, which will likely only fly a handful of times because it was already obsolete and insanely overpriced a decade ago.
Meanwhile in Boca Chica, SpaceX just attaches a rocket mount to the top of a handful of "off the shelf" self-propelled heavy equipment transport platforms in order to transport the considerably larger and more numerous and boosters - whose prototypes alone likely already outnumber the total number of SLS rockets that will ever be made.
I can't imagine *why* the traditional aerospace industry is having so much trouble...
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday April 04, @06:43PM
... or units of mass, for pedants.
How bizarre, we are told the weight in millions of pounds (and pick up trucks), and I can't even see a weight on that Guiness certificate close-up. Makes me wonder if NASA express interplanetery distances in inches.
Also, FTFA:
8-12 hours for 4 miles is closer to 0.5 mph. OK they stop for coffee breaks and bumps in the road, but 1 mph on the straights. But could be quicker on foot? No shit Sherlock. Maybe that was written for an American audience but I think I could wriggle there on my back faster than that.