On deck with my buddy Erik. We had a great morning crawling all over the floating rocket launch platform.
Beneath our feet is a huge three-stage Zenit rocket being prepped and fueled in a room that is officially part of the Ukraine. 240 Ukrainian and Russian engineers live and work on the boat, so the walk through the living quarters reminded me of my earlier trips to the outskirts of Russia.
The first two stages are Ukranian (kerosene and liquid oxygen), and the third stage is made by Energia in Russia. The third stage was loaded with hypergolics, a binary mixture that explodes upon contact, and the source of Neil Armstrong’s pre-launch nightmares (photo). The payload is an Italian military satellite.
It was surreal to be hearing the chatter of Russian and Ukranian voices, who were nervous about the camera around my neck, while in the bowels of Ukranian territory, and close enough to touch a fueled rocket that’s taller than the Space Shuttle (NASA only let me get as close as the astronauts’ families). All this in a harbor serving Los Angeles.
It was also breathtaking to walk around and have the rocket pointing straight at me in a horizontal position. Made me think of Slim Pickens.
“The Russians like to do it horizontal. The Americans like to do it vertical. That’s just the way they are,” I was told, referring, of course, to how they handle a rocket.
To roll the rocket to the pad, they had to import railway lines from Russia to get the sizing right for the transport vehicle. The hydraulic rams that erect the rocket are just huge, a massive overbuild that could have been easily been addressed by placing them farther from the pivot point for more leverage. Brute force and improvised patchwork solutions could be seen throughout, especially in the fueling systems.
And then I learned a fascinating piece of history relayed by the Russian rocket scientists:
For Sputnik, they dragged the rocket out to the launch pad… with horses.
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