When one thinks of a NASA ship, it’s generally not the seagoing type that pops into ones head.  However, NASA does in fact have two vessels made for the high seas – MV Liberty Star and the MV Freedom Star – that assist with a shuttle launch.  Both vessels are tasked as recovery ships for retrieving spent Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) that are used to power the shuttle’s ascent into space.  After two minutes of flight, the boosters separate from the orbiter and external tank at an altitude of approximately 24 miles, descend under parachutes and land in the Atlantic Ocean where the MV Liberty Star and the MV Freedom Star are waiting to retrieve the reusable SRB’s.

It all begins about 24 hours before a shuttle launch, when the two ships set out to sea, manned by highly trained crews of professional merchant mariners and divers. During the operation, each ship retrieves one booster. Each ship has a permanently assigned crew of 10: a captain, two mates, four seamen, two marine engineers and a cook. In addition, eight divers accompany each crew to perform the delicate retrieval operation.

It just so happens that Marshall Space Flight Center has recently posted some of the best images ever captured of an SRBs decent into the ocean.  [Continue Reading →]

Related Posts:

Our favorite competitor in professional mariner news, Marine-Buzz.com, recently had an exceptional post on maritime technology used to launch rockets into space. 

Having seen ships being used as a Hospital, University, Museum, promoting fashion, its time now to see a ship being used as a Platform to launch satellites. Sea Launch is preparing to launch a Zenit-3SL rocket with a Thuraya-3 communication satellite shortly from a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean. To view live web telecast click here.

The Sea Launch is the world’s first ever commercial international project to develop and operate a sea-based space launch system. The main objective of this project is to launch satellites from a mobile sea-based launch platform.

The key advantages of the Sea Launch system over ground launch sites are as follows:

• Ability to launch directly from the equator thus reducing unit costs of their delivery to the target orbit.
• Ability to launch with any azimuth from open sea, thus making launches free of political risks.
• Compactness, no need to have a well-developed ground infrastructure and its associated social support (roads, power, hotels, schools, hospitals, etc.), which radically reduces the numbers of personnel participating in the work, and, therefore, the cost of operation.
• Ability to process spacecraft for launch on the US territory (Long Beach, CA), virtually in an “urban” environment.

Being the closest marine technology company to gCaptain HQ, Sea Launch is a company that interests us greatly… we only wish we had gotten to the story sooner!

You can find MarineBuzz’s exhaustive review of SeaLaunch technology including additional photos HERE.

Related Posts:

• Fixed Rate Broadband Enters The Pacific
• AIS – Check your GPS Offset For Errors
• Marine Air Bags – A Most Unusual (and effective?) Ship Launching Technique
• Maritime Monday 202
• Interesting Ship of The Week – Nasa Recovery Ships