On Tuesday, as part of the @nasa social experience, we got up close and personal with the crawler transporters and got to speak to some of the folks who work on the crawler. According to them, it takes two years to get your license to drive it - even astronauts, who are qualified to fly spaceships, aren't allowed to drive the crawler without a license. Makes sense, given that they're the largest self-propelled land vehicles in the world!
CT-2, shown here, will be used to carry NASA's SLS rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launchpad in support of the Artemis program. Both CT-2 and its partner crawler CT-1 have long carried rockets from the VAB to the pad, first constructed for the Apollo program before then being used throughout the Shuttle program. CT-1 has seen better days, and is now being used primarily for parts for CT-2.
While much of the hardware is original, several things have been updated over time, mainly the internal computer system. When you're carrying something weighing millions of pounds that has catastrophic consequences if you tip over, stability is paramount. The computer within the crawler controls a massive hydraulic system that keeps the top deck, which is the size of a baseball infield, so flat that if you placed a golf ball atop it, it wouldn't roll around. Just as much of a marvel of engineering as the rockets are!
If you're curious, while the drivers have seen it reach speeds of over one mile per hour, it really doesn't like doing that. They say it averages about 0.8mph.
