Concept Models
Concept Models
Booster Train
The two massive rocket boosters - consisting of 10 individual segments, weighing in at 180 tons each - would require extra special care along each and every mile of their journey. Customizing Rail Cars Due to their tremendous size and weight, the mission-critical rocket segments needed to be shipped in specially outfitted rail cars to safely make the 2,800-mile trip. Being the only railroad owning 200-ton flatcars outfitted for moving the oversized equipment, Union Pacific was ready to assist. The UP mechanical engineering team got to work, making sure the flatcars would be ready to carry the 13-foot wide and 32-foot long rocket booster segments.
They retrofitted two of the flatcars with heating/cooling units to keep the two aft segments and nozzles at an optimal temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit. David Tuma, manager Mechanical Engineering at Union Pacific, created the overall design of the rack and application to the cars for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) units.
"With NASA's transition to the new SLS boosters, the size of the boosters' nozzles was increased to improve performance. The new design required changes to the materials used to produce them, and some of those new materials are more sensitive to extreme temperatures during transit. With this shipment planned for the middle of summer, an efficient design and effective application of the cooling units was critical," Due to the extreme heft of the shipment, car placement in the train "consist" (or the sequence of rail cars) required careful planning. To distribute the weight evenly across the entire train, "buffer cars" were placed in between each of the customized flatcars carrying the booster rocket motor segments. Each buffer boxcar is filled with 50,000 pounds of concrete to improve train handling.
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