Texas & Southeast Snapshot: NASA's Mobile Launcher 2's Tower Module 6
Photographer: Jordan Vinson, Communications Supervisor, Bechtel Submitted By: Ashley Accardo, Press Secretary, Bechtel
Jordan Vinson, Bechtel communications supervisor covering the firm’s work to deliver NASA’s Mobile Launcher 2’s Tower Module 6, says he had to wait awhile to snap this image.
Calling it “one of my favorite photos,” he says his fall-prevention training and safety gear allowed him to climb to the top of the 240-ft-tall tower and focus his shot on the irregular-shaped cavity in the base—dubbed “the flame hole”—which he says is “built to sustain the violence of the business end of NASA’s Artemis rockets.”
Visible above the flame hole is some interior of the base and a section of the massive ignition over-pressure sound suppression system’s piping network built into the base, which will force what Vinson describes as “a massive deluge of water onto the launcher’s base during rocket liftoff.”
Ashley Accardo, press secretary for Bechtel, notes in the photo submission for ENR’s annual photo contest that the water deluge will reduce acoustic load stresses that NASA’s Artemis rockets will exert on the launch platform, and that without this system, the launcher “would be destroyed by the rocket during liftoff.”
