Saturn
MLP-3 was originally constructed between 1963 and 1964 as a Mobile Launcher for the Saturn V rocket, and was designated ML-1, or LUT-1. It was the first Mobile Launcher to be constructed, and was built by Ingalls Iron Works. The swing arms, which were constructed by Hayes International were added at a later date.
The first launch from ML-1 was the maiden flight of the Saturn V, and the first launch from LC-39, Apollo 4. Following this, it was used for two manned Apollo launches; Apollo 8 and Apollo 11. After NASA decided to move Saturn IB launches from LC-34 to LC-39, it was modified by the addition of a structure known as the Milkstool, which allowed the Saturn IB to use the same Launch Umbilical Tower as the much larger Saturn V. Three manned flights to Skylab, and the Apollo launch for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project were conducted from ML-1 using the Milkstool.
Prior to the scrapping of the LUT in 2004, there had been a campaign to rebuild and preserve it as a memorial to Project Apollo. The Crew access arm is preserved at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
Read more about this topic: Mobile Launcher Platform 3
Famous quotes containing the word saturn:
“From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Test of the poet is knowledge of love,
For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove;
Never was poet, of late or of yore,
Who was not tremulous with love-lore.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The forehead and the little ears
Have gone where Saturn keeps the years;
The breast where roses could not live
Has done with rising and with falling.”
—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)