(Posted from China Injection Mold blog)
Some cool tooling factory images:
SLS Core Stage Production Continues for Rocket’s First Flight
Image by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
Throughout NASA’s 43-acre rocket factory, the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, engineers are building all five parts of the Space Launch System’s core stage. For the first SLS flight for deep space exploration with NASA’s Orion spacecraft, major structural manufacturing is complete on three parts: the forward skirt, the intertank and the engine section. Test articles, which are structurally similar to flight hardware, and are used to qualify the core stage for flight, are in various stages of production and testing.
“One of the most challenging parts of building the world’s most powerful rocket has been making the largest rocket stage ever manufactured for the first time,” said Steve Doering, the SLS stages manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “The 212-foot-tall core stage is a new design made with innovative welding tools and techniques.”
To build the rocket’s fuel tanks, Boeing, the prime contractor for the SLS core stage, is joining some of the thickest parts ever built with self-reacting friction stir welding. NASA and Boeing engineers and materials scientists have scrutinized the weld confidence articles and developed new weld parameters for making the liquid oxygen and hydrogen tanks for the first SLS mission.
Image Credit: NASA/MSFC Michoud image: Judy Guidry
For more information about the Space Launch System
Crystal Mill
Image by Road Fun
Definitely a shot from the archive, this was originally a color slide taken when I was a child using a very simple camera. It may have been a Brownie. This and a couple of other slides were found amongst my mom’s belongings and I had them scanned to a CD. Originally in color, I feel this shot works better processed into sepia. At the time I felt the Mill was a very precarious structure but it seems it still stands today. This was not an easy place to visit and required some off roading in a rented Jeep. My father died when I was young and the fishing trip we took to Colorado one summer was the only major father-son event we got to enjoy together. A treasured memory forever.
According to Wikipedia:
The Crystal Mill, or the Old Mill in Crystal, Colorado in the United States, was actually not a mill in the sense of being a factory, but was instead a power generating station.
It did not generate electrical power, but rather used a water turbine to drive an air compressor. The compressed air was then used to power other machinery or tools.
Today it stands as a Colorado icon, and is reputed to be the most photographed site in the state.
Thanks as always for your visits, faves and more! Hope you all have a great Thursday. BTW, today is the Princess’s first day at her new preschool so there is excitement in the air 🙂
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