Launch Pad - Transport of Rockets To The Pad

Transport of Rockets To The Pad

There are several different types of launch site, determined by the means by which the rocket gets to the pad.

• The first large rocket, the V-2, travelled horizontally with its tail forward to the launch site at Peenemünde. This is the most common method of transport to the pad and was used for all large Soviet rockets, even Buran.
• In a similar manner, at the Soviet launch site near Volgograd, a silo used to launch test rockets would have its top opened and a second stage and payload would be driven in horizontally and tilted on top of a first stage already in the silo, the nose cone and some of the second stage remaining visible above ground. Hence no surface pad is used; Russian silos are reusable. This method was only used for the Cosmos series of small satellite launching vehicles.
• Like the Saturn V and Saturn IB rockets launched from Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center in the past, the Space Shuttle vehicles are first assembled vertically in the Vehicle Assembly Building on a Mobile Launcher Platform (MLP). The assembled shuttle and MLP ride on top of a Crawler-Transporter, which slowly drives to the launch pad. A similar system is used to launch Ariane 5 rockets at ELA-3 at Guiana Space Centre, a French spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana.
• At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, two parallel standard gauge railroad tracks were used to transport the Titan launch vehicle and its mobile launcher platform from the integration building to the launch areas at Complex 40 and 41, and continue to be used for the Atlas V.
• In the 1920s, Hermann Oberth described a method in which the rocket is assembled vertically on a floating barge, which he used in the movie Frau im Mond. This has never been used, although it was seriously considered for use at Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 for the Saturn V. It was rejected for that application due to the instability of the top-heavy unfuelled rocket and gantry.
• At Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, the Titan series of rockets were set up vertically in a gantry in a windowless building at SLC-4, the outside walls of which would be rolled away just at launch. This was done for purposes of military secrecy. Similar systems are used at SLC-6 and LC37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for the Delta IV rocket, ELA-1 & 2 at CSG for the Ariane 1-4, and Kagoshima for the M-V.
• Zenit 3SL rockets of Sea Launch are transported horizontally by sea aboard the Ocean Odyssey converted oil rig, which is then used to erect and launch them.
• Dnepr rockets are transported vertically and then inserted into a silo.