The Crawlerway is a double pathway at the

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968 ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

. It runs between the

Vehicle Assembly Building The Vehicle Assembly Building (originally the Vertical Assembly Building), or VAB, is a large building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), designed to assemble large pre-manufactured space vehicle components, such as the massive Saturn V and th ...

and the two launch pads at

Launch Complex 39 Launch Complex 39 (LC-39) is a rocket launch site at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida, United States. The site and its collection of facilities were originally built as the Apollo program's "Moonport" and later m ...

. It has a length of to Pad 39A and Pad 39B, respectively. A bed of stones lies beneath a layer of

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term a ...

and a surface made of Tennessee river rocks. The Crawlerway was originally designed to support the weight of the

Saturn V Saturn V is a retired American super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by NASA under the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon. The rocket was human-rated, with multistage rocket, three stages, and powered with liquid-propellant r ...

rocket and its payload, plus the Launch Umbilical Tower and

mobile launcher platform A mobile launcher platform (MLP), also known as mobile launch platform, is a structure used to support a large multistage space vehicle which is assembled (stacked) vertically in an integration facility (e.g. the Vehicle Assembly Building) and t ...

, atop a

crawler-transporter The crawler-transporters, formally known as the Missile Crawler Transporter Facilities, are a pair of tracked vehicles used to transport spacecraft from NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) along the Crawlerway to Launch Complex 39. They were ...

during the Apollo program. It was also used from 1981 to 2011 to transport the lighter

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...

s to their launch pads. Construction of the Crawlerway connected

Merritt Island Merritt Island is a peninsula, commonly referred to as an island, in Brevard County, Florida, United States, located on the eastern Floridian coast, along the Atlantic Ocean. It is also the name of an unincorporated town in the central and sout ...

with the mainland, forming a peninsula. The main vehicle access road to and from the launch pads, the Saturn Causeway, runs alongside the Crawlerway.

Construction

The Crawlerway is composed of two lanes, separated by a median. The top layer is Tennessee river rock, thick on the straight sections and thick on curves. Tennessee river rock was chosen for many properties, including hardness, roundness, sphericity and resistance to LA Abrasion. Beneath that is of graded, crushed stone, resting on two layers of fill. By 2013, a project to repair and upgrade the Crawlerway was undertaken, the first time since it was constructed that the foundation had been repaired. Additional rock was added to the surface in June 2014.

Gallery

File:NASA Crawlerway under construction in December 1963 (KSC-64C-7).jpg, Crawlerway under construction in December 1963 File:Apollo 14 rollout to Pad A (2).jpg,

Apollo 14 Apollo 14 (January 31, 1971February 9, 1971) was the eighth crewed mission in the United States Apollo program, the third to land on the Moon, and the first to land in the lunar highlands. It was the last of the " H missions", landings at s ...

rolls to Pad 39A in November 1970 File:S79-35236.jpg, The prototype Space Shuttle ''Enterprise'' begins its journey down the Crawlerway from Pad 39A to the VAB in July 1979 following a series of fit-checks File:STS-98 Atlantis rolls to the VAB (KSC-01PP-0135).jpg, The Space Shuttle ''Atlantis'' is moved back to the VAB in January 2001 after the launch of

STS-98 STS-98 was a 2001 Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle '' Atlantis''. It was the first human spaceflight launch of the 21st century. STS-98 delivered to the station the ''Destiny'' Laboratory Mod ...

was scrubbed File:Crawlerway up close.jpg, Close up of Crawlerway in April 2005; originally smooth, the rocks have been crushed after many passages by the crawler-transporters

References

External links

{{Spaceflight landmarks Kennedy Space Center Apollo program Space Shuttle program Buildings and structures in Merritt Island, Florida National Register of Historic Places in Brevard County, Florida 1964 establishments in Florida