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A couple of weeks before space shuttles are launched from the Kennedy Space Center, at the Cape Canaveral complex in Florida, they are taken out on a five-kilometer cruise atop the massive, Apollo-era Crawler-Transporter (CT), the second largest tracked vehicle in the world. This giant beast of burden takes the shuttles and the rockets carrying them, set up in launch configuration, to Launch Pad 39A. In the latest such trek, while carrying the space shuttle Discovery on Tuesday, the transporter was forced to move slowly and uncertainly, due to massive lightning storms and rains that made the road difficult. When on launch pads, NASA's shuttles are protected by extensive lightning masts, as well as by shell-like protective structures, which ensure that no damage is caused even by the most severe storm. However, on the strip of road that connects KSC's massive Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to the only launch pad still associated with the Shuttle Program, 39A, the vehicle, !
shuttle, carrier vehicle and staff are at the will of the elements, as one NASA official plastically put it. “We had torrential rain here yesterday evening. It rained for hours (...) so it was pretty soggy,†Allard Beutel, a NASA spokesperson talking from the KSC, told Space yesterday. Discovery's roll-out, which h...
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http://news.softpedia.com/news/Discovery-039-s-Roll-Out-Slowed-Down-by-Lighting-Storm-118364.shtml
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