NASA to demolish Kennedy Space Center towers.
The servicing towers at the Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39B will be demolished this summer to ready the complex for an uncertain future.
The $1.3 million job was originally planned to begin outfitting the seaside launch pad to host Ares 1 rockets, the booster NASA was planning to carry crews to orbit after the space shuttle’s retirement. NASA is going ahead with plans to bring down the fixed and rotating service structures at pad 39B, even though the Ares 1 rocket and the entire Constellation program are being axed.
Officials say they are continuing with the pad facelift to prepare the facility to support future commercial or heavy-lift rocket development work. But the identity of the historic pad’s next user is unknown.
New York-based LVI Services Inc., will begin work in late June or early July. The demolition will not use explosives like those used on other abandoned launch pads, but will be dismantled in a “very controlled” process as workers take apart the towers one piece at a time.
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