6.2 Launcher Selection/Launch Sites

There  are several launch site that are available for the launch of the MMVS. The  following are selected for the launch of the MMVS due to various reason such as  location, security and facility.

Kennedy  Space Center

Kennedy  Space Center is America's gateway to exploration, discovery and achievement in  space unlike anything witnessed at any time by any species in the 4-billion year  history of this planet.

From  the early  Redstone  rockets to the construction of the first-ever City in Space - the International Space Station - Kennedy's history  is a chronicle of the Space Age. It continues to make history as the launch site  for the U.S. Space Shuttle, the vehicle that will carry the majority of the ISS  components into to orbit and the crews to assemble them.

Boeing  employees will be process payloads. Processing includes planning, transporting,  assembling and testing of payloads prior to their placement in the Shuttle's  cargo bay for launch. With assembly of the ISS, activities include periodic  processing for re-supply and for the experiments, expendables and other items  returned to Earth.

The  Shuttle blasts off from either of two launch pads simply called 39-A and 39-B.  They originally were designed to support "Apollo," the program that  captivated the world when it sent to the moon the first living beings ever to  set foot there?Xtwo Americans. The pads later were modified for Space Shuttle  launchings.

Pads  39-A and 39-B essentially are identical. Octagonal in shape, each pad's base  contains 68,000 cubic yards of concrete and has a flame trench 42-ft. deep,  450-ft. long and 58-ft. wide. The 38-ft. high flame deflector weighs 1.3 million  lbs. The highest structure on each pad reaches 347-ft. into the sky.

Fuel,  oxidizer, high-pressure gas and other essentials run through approximately 2.5  million feet of tubing and piping at the two pads, about the distance from New  York to Washington, D.C.

Almost  2,500 Boeing employees work at Kennedy. In addition to payload processing, they  maintain the Shuttle's main engines, built by Boeing's Rocketdyne Propulsion and  Power unit in Canoga Park, Calif.

Johnson  Space Center

Johnson  Space Center has been America's primary center for the design and development of  spacecraft for human flight since 1961. From Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, through  Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz, Johnson Space Center led the way.

Today  Johnson Space Center is NASA's lead center for The Space Shuttle Program The  International Space Station Program Space Operations Management The Biomedical  Research and Countermeasures Program The Advanced Human Support Technology  Program

The  Center's agency-wide assignments include extravehicular activity (space walks),  robotics technology associated with human activities, space medicine, technology  utilization on the International Space Station and exploration mission planning  and design.

The  Johnson Space Center is responsible for astronaut selection and training, and is  home to the nation's astronaut corps, about 150 men and women diverse in  heritage and background.

The  Johnson Space Center also is responsible for curatorial care and study of lunar  and planetary material. At the Center is more than 840 pounds of lunar material  gathered by astronauts of the six missions that took men to the moon's surface.  It was received and processed, and is carefully stored and protected in a  specially designed facility. Material believed to be from Mars -material that  fell to Earth as meteorites after being blasted from that planet's surface by a  cosmic collision - also is at the facility.

Baikonur  Cosmodrome

Russia's  once-secret Baikonur Cosmodrome on Nov. 20 launched the International Space  Station's founding component. This site has a legacy of sometimes-shocking  firsts.

It  is the site from which Earth's first man-made satellite blasted off in 1957 and  burned the name Sputnik into the minds of an entire generation of Americans. It  is where the first human ever to orbit Earth, Yuri Gagarin, was launched from in  1961. Baikonur is where the space race was born.

But  almost no-one outside the former Soviet Union knew of the launch complex until  decades later. When its existence was revealed, the Russians disclosed that it  was in fact located near Tyuratam in Kazakhstan. That's some 200 miles southwest  of Baikonur, a small mining town's name deliberately chosen to mislead  outsiders.

The  Cosmodrome is the only Russian site from which Proton - the  behemoth rocket that Control Module Zarya  rode into orbit - can be launched. And Baikonur is the only Russian complex from  which manned missions and geostationary, lunar, planetary and ocean surveillance  missions are launched.

Located  about 1300 miles southeast of Moscow in a semi-arid zone, Baikonur has two Proton  launch complexes - one for military missions, the other for international  projects. Each complex has two launch pads. Zarya  was boosted aloft from Launch Complex 333-L, which was renovated in 1989.

Construction  of the Cosmodrome began in 1955, when it was called Test Area No. 5,"  and was completed in late 1956. It was officially opened with the launch of an  SS-6 intercontinental ballistic missile in May, 1957. It has been said that  Baikonur had as many as 80 operational launch pads in the 1970s.

Among  the other vehicles currently being launched from Baikonur are Soyuz, Zenit, Tsiklon,  Rokot and Energia. Herds  of wild horses and desert camels nevertheless roam the Cosmodrome's vast ranges.