mlorrey:<br />I believe the case is closed, point to mlorrey. Game, set, match.<br /><br />Me:<br />Its not over till the fat lady sings LOL.<br /><br />I looked today in a book series I have about Apollo that was published in the early 1970s and found the VAB had 2 cranes of 250 ton capacity. The 2 cranes together could not lift a monolithic booster.<br /><br />I've been aware of the solid motor S-1C studies but didn't have them handy to reference earlier. I also figured the studies were intended to result in operational vehicles after probably 1970. The studies were conducted in 1965-67 period, after the VAB was built with the 2 cranes mentioned above installed for Apollo.<br /><br />mlorrey:<br />1.6+ million kg. They would have needed 1,600 ton cranes to hoist those mothers. Aerojet built facilities in Florida to produce these full length monolithic 260 inch rocket motors, and built a few to test.<br /><br />Me:<br />Your forgetting that the 1.6 million kg figure is about 730,000 lbs or 365 tons. I actually got to see that facility in the late 1970s but by then it was abandoned. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>