on the other... judging by the pictures nobody did the maintenance anyway, so it's straight up safety precaution and hazard removal
Almost 70% of US steel production is from recycled metal. Structural steel is recycled at a 98% rate.
These structures were not something we could reasonably make into a museum (too much work required to make them safe/useful for that, and there already is a nice museum in the city that I strongly recommend you visit instead), so it is time to move on.
>Additionally, NASA partnered with Auburn University to create digital models of each site.
Can't wait to see what they build there next.
schiffern•3w ago
The sad part isn't that they're gone. The sad part is that we didn't make them obsolete until just recently.
icegreentea2•3w ago
Stennis didn't exist at the start of the space race or Apollo. Marshall is colocated on Redstone Arsenal, a legacy of parts of NASA being bootstrapped out of the Army ballistic missile program. Marshall had test stands because that era of NASA (aka von Braun) sought to colocated engineering, prototyping and test.
One challenge with continuing tests at Marshall is that... it's actually really close to population centers. Large engine tests would be ridiculously disruptive. There are comments in the Ars article noting that people living in Huntsville could hear the demolition work.
pavon•3w ago