Space mission on BPW axles

The “Beyel Bros. Crane & Rigging” heavy haulage company undertook the special assignment at the time and relied on a parallel-coupled heavy-duty combination from Goldhofer with two 16 BPW axles. Overall, the vehicle weighed an impressive 920 tonnes and was 40 metres long. These dimensions meant that even on the generally wide American roads, it was a challenge in some places to safely transport the pad.

At the start in Brunswiek, Georgia, the trailer manoeuvred precisely under the launch pad and picked it up using the hydraulic axle compensation system. Since the centre of gravity was at an extremely high seven metres, the levelling system of the Goldhofer trailers had to constantly compensate for the lateral inclination of the roads. The first ten miles crossed extreme altitude differences to a harbour where the ramp was loaded onto a barge – a flat vessel for transport by water. This transported the load 200 miles further to Cocoa in Florida, where the “roll-off” was performed. The hydraulic axle balancer had to work hard again during disembarkation, coping with sometimes enormous differences in height and always keeping the launch pad level. The journey to the destination in Cape Caneveral was then a further 26 miles, made difficult by many obstacles such as trees. But everything went smoothly: the pad arrived at the NASA site on time.

Goldhofer accepted another “mission” for NASA in 2013, when the legendary US space shuttle was to be brought to the New York Space Museum. NASA commissioned Goldhofer’s customer “Bay Crane” from New York to transport the last Space Shuttle from JFK International Airport to its official retirement home: a floating museum housed in the former aircraft carrier USS Intrepid. The Space Shuttle had a long life behind it: by 2011, it had completed a total of 135 flights since its first launch in 1981. The Space Shuttle could carry 24.5 tonnes of payload and seven astronauts into low Earth orbit at an altitude of around 200 to 650 kilometres and dock with a space station using docking adapters.

Bay Crane, one of the most important crane service providers and heavy transport specialists in the USA, has been working for some time with Goldhofer’s innovative THP/SL heavy-duty module systems together with BPW axles. They were given the task of accompanying the Shuttle on its “final voyage”. The Space Shuttle arrived at JFK International Airport on the back of a Boeing 747. The Bay Crane team then used specially developed lifting gear to safely lift the Shuttle onto the Goldhofer axles. The Space Shuttle travelled for about a mile on land before it was then also loaded onto a barge and carried over the Hudson River to its destination.

Bay Crane was the first company to be able to lift the Space Shuttle on and off with just one crane. “We are very proud of that”, explains Kenny Bernardo, Vice President Operations of the company. Stefan Fuchs, former Chairman of the Board of the Memmingen-based public limited company, said at the time: “The Space Shuttle transport is the highlight of our success story. Our modular heavy-duty systems are not considered the most reliable heavy-duty axles in the world for nothing. When our customers consistently rely on Goldhofer quality for prestigious projects like this, it’s the best possible reference for us.”

Indeed, the Space Shuttle has an unladen weight of 70 tonnes, is 37.24 metres long and has a wingspan of almost 24 metres. Even during land transport, the wing area of the Space Shuttle is thus almost 250 square metres. A total of 24 axles of the THP/SL type and a 230-ton flat bed bridge were needed to transport the decommissioned Space Shuttle – these and the entire team did a great job.