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I Am Building SLS: Jeff Adams

I am Building SLS Jeff Adams

The trip back to the Moon for America’s space program begins right here on the ground. I’m a civil engineer who spent part of my childhood in Titusville, Florida watching the historic Apollo program launches (my father worked for Boeing fueling the first stages of the Saturn launch vehicles).  Now, I’m helping lay a solid foundation for NASA’s astronauts return to the Moon by 2024 by working with a team that’s responsible for transporting some of the largest rocket hardware ever built.

You see, before NASA’S Space Launch System soars from the launch pad, NASA needs to test full-scale replicas of the rocket’s components to give engineers real-world data to verify their computer models. This rocket will take astronauts back to the Moon for the first time since I watched Apollo 17 lift off in 1972, so it’s got to be safe and it’s got to be right.

That’s where my team, the Logistics Engineering and Transportation Team, comes in. We work behind the scenes to move full-scale core stage test hardware from NASA’s rocket factory, Michoud Assembly Facility, near New Orleans, to test facilities at NASA’S Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Each move has to be meticulously planned. The team spends months planning and developing detailed transportation move procedures to ensure the test articles are delivered without a mishap. The team also comes up with contingency plans – just in case.

So far, my team has safely transported three test articles to their test fixtures: the engine section, the intertank and the enormous liquid hydrogen tank, using three pieces of ground support equipment: the Engine Section Transporter, the Multipurpose Transportation System and NASA’s barge Pegasus. Next, we’ll be moving the liquid oxygen tank structural test article.

The core stage test hardware may be the size of building – a small or large building depending on which component we’re talking about — but sometimes the clearance is tight to get a test article onto Pegasus and into the test stand! The team analyzes the data and runs the numbers again and again and again. Their attention to detail is unmatched. Even so, when the hardware finally rolls onto the barge and then into the test stand, we all feel a great sense of accomplishment. It’s high-fives and fist-bumps all around, then it’s right back to work planning the next move for this team.

On the day SLS and NASA’s Orion spacecraft launch, you might not think about the ground support equipment or the logistics and coordination involved in transporting large test articles. My team will be watching the fruits of our behind-the-scenes labor, though. The equipment and procedures we’ve built are laying the foundation of a new generation of spaceflight — and that makes this civil engineer proud!