Going Fishing with NASA For The Space Shuttle’s Recyclable Rockets (Video)

NASA’s vehicle fleet doesn’t just include shuttles, rockets, training planes, and crawlers. As this unprecedented video from the space agency illustrates, NASA’s two boats, Liberty Star and Freedom Star, are charged with retrieving the Space Shuttle’s spent solid rocket boosters from the Atlantic, where they fall after ferrying the ship into orbit (after the giant orange fuel tank falls away, it disintegrates over the ocean). In the video, we see the ships’ crews fishing out the tanks that belong to the most recent shuttle, STS-133 Discovery.

The ships drag the giant boosters to Hangar AF at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, where they are processed before being transported to Utah for refurbishment and storage. To make that trip, and the one back to Kennedy Space Center, NASA relies on another old dependable mode of transportation: a railway.

After the shuttle is retired this year, the SRBs will likely be distributed to educational institutions and museums along with the Space Shuttles, in what will be one of the best fire sales ever.

Watch the launch of STS-133 from the left solid rocket booster. Separation is at 10.10; splashdown starts at 24:00:

Footage from “Rockets and Rails,” a documentary about the train that carries the solid rocket boosters.

Related:

• Space Shuttle Parking Lot: A Documentary About Humanity’s Greatest Spectacle
• The Last Space Shuttle Fuel Tank
• The Space Shuttle Motherboard

PHOTO Joby Minor