Nasa Rocket Tower | Building Demolition | BlowDown | S01 E04 | Free Documentary

an outdated launch tower on America's Space Coast must be demolished the US Air Force brings in a demolition team at the top of its game it's all eyes on us this five point nine million kilogram steel fortress won't go down without a fight it's hurricane reinforced and fireproof to withstand the Inferno of a rocket launcher set on wheels the tower is a moving target it's the science of rocketry versus the art of demolition Florida Cape Canaveral Patrick Air Force Base sits just a few kilometers to the south of NASA's Kennedy Space Center the heart of America's manned space program specialized launch towers send top-secret satellites into space mobile service tower 40 is among them after 55 missions top brass marked the obsolete tower for destruction to get the job done they call in CDI controlled demolition incorporated a family demolition team from Phoenix matters getting a little bit uptight it is the most difficult job they have ever been asked to do by the airforce because it's a rocket launch tower it's built super-strong and it's entirely metal frame is immune to dynamite so the team has loaded it with 700 powerful steel cutting explosives nearly one mile of detonating cord connects the explosive charges to each other but that's no guarantee this behemoth will fall okay here we go Stacy 30 seconds to implosion the Air Force locks the site down any error in the plan and the tower could topple backwards destroying nearby structures and creating a public relations nightmare for this base program it's getting real emotional it's getting real close [Music] Patrick Air Force Base home to the 45th Space Wing their job to guarantee that America has the most sophisticated and advanced presence in space [Music] 40 launch sites are surrounded by over 6,000 hectares of Sun baked brush fields a region plagued by electrical storms and hurricane force winds each launch site consists of outbuildings and service towers designed to protect the launch pad once the largest mobile structure in the world MST forty's job was to help Rockets roll into place and protect them until launch consisting of 26 levels the structure measures in at just under 300 feet tall it's surrounded by four massive lightning towers and below it a control room called the Batcave during the towers destruction both the lightning towers and the Batcave must be preserved the Air Force is hoping to use the Batcave for future projects you see the mark the Wazza is CBI's demolition designer unlike other structures that mark has imploded MST 40 is unique in design and strength requiring an unusual demolition plan when we walk around the structure you'll see that we have a lot more structural weight and and a lot more structural capability on the north side and we do this out Marx demolition strategy looks something like this from a single initiation point he will ignite a charge that travels through two lines at over 7,000 meters per second the charge will ignite the explosives loaded into the first five levels the tower should begin to fall then a second set of explosives will detonate on the seventh level this should create a notch in the tower that the structure will bend over as it falls but there's a catch the tower is currently located above the Batcave if the tower comes down here the weight will collapse the Batcave and destroy it for a successful demolition Mark's team will have to relocate the tower mark tasks project manager Kevin class with moving it to the end of the launch pads runway Kevin will reposition the town using the wheels at its base but there's a problem no one has moved the tower wheels in three years and they're seized in place it isn't the first time CDI has faced demanding conditions at Patrick Air Force Base MST 40s demolition he is part of NASA's long-term plan to retire old launch sites and create room for new ones that may one day take civilians into outer space in 2005 CDI takes out historic launch complex 13 in 2007 they upped the ante imploding two towers in one day first complex 36 a [Music] as the dust is settling they target complex 36 B within minutes both structures are on the ground these Allsteel implosions are unique challenges but MST 40 presents CDI with an all-time first the demo team has never had to move a structure before imploding it Kevin must move the tower 23 meters to the end of the runway the tower sits low to the ground where large stopping blocks hold it in place hydraulic motors once held the tower up but they've been cut off and MST 40 has sagged onto the blocks all five point nine million kilograms of the tower presses on them seizing the wheels in place Kevin must find a way to release them what we have to do in order for us to be able to move the MST its whittle away from the top of those stops so it'll rest back down on its wheels we're doing what the hydraulic motors used to do but we're doing it with a torch the crew cuts the blocks the tower rests on to free the wheels at the end of the runway are another set of pre-established stopping blocks that must be cut down to accommodate the towers low to the ground movement these blocks and the team skills are the only things that will stop the tower from collapsing over the edge of the runway finally they're ready to mobilize supervising contractor mark or remediation is responsible for ensuring the move goes smoothly our site superintendent Peter Braunger has two goals the first is to get the structure moving the second is to stop the tower before it goes over the edge of the runway the two machines out front with these two inch lines to the north where have two machines tethered to the back just to make sure we could slow it down if you can to move real slowly and get it into position they're uncertain whether the push-pull system will work the machines might not have enough power to get the tower moving the demolition team has recruited for 1,500 horsepower excavators to move the tower they hook steel cables with a two inch diameter by chains to the excavators the game of push and pull begins [Music] [Music] they successfully push it past the halfway mark as the tower approaches the end of the runway they pull back to slow its momentum if they can't stop it quickly enough the tower will crash over the edge of the runway Kruse hold the chains talk as the tower approaches its destination they're pulling gradually decelerates MST forties movement with only centimeters to spare MSD 40 comes to a halt if that looks like you just got thirteen point two million pounds off your shoulders with the tower on site mark Liu Wuzhou and Kevin class can now assess the work that must be done to prepare the tower for implosion there's an extraordinary amount of interconnected steel it's got to come out where it could affect the implosion every column on this level needs to get done the diagonals of this level need to be separated not at both ends just to go to be a separation so in your mind you're drawing a line through all structural members here so the whole top you roll off they're surprised by what they see on every level they find more steel reinforcements than they expected the demolition team will have to remove almost 200,000 kilograms of steel from MST 40 all these things that you see that are that are standing vertically and horizontally it's it's the we don't like stickers in this business they seem that they'll build stop inertia and it's just the finest thing that'll hold something up for moving and as you can see right now it's the sum of a lot of parts they have only 28 days to remove it all before the towers imploded every piece of conduit everything every hydraulic line every fire line must come out on the floors where we are living it first they will remove the aluminum siding to access the steel conduit and piping Kevin and longtime employee Billy Palmer come up with a possible shortcut if I need to pop two holes and cable it and the whole wall right now I mean it that save me a lot of time stage it right there until I get rich on the outside another crew member operates the excavator he tugs on the cable but instead of pulling it off in big sheets it shreds the siding Billy and Kevin must now use torches to burn the seams and remove the siding piece by piece their short cut is taking a long time after 10 hours they finally remove the skin the demolition team can attack the guts of the town it's gonna have to go holy mackerel oh I guess this is why I don't build anything Wow Kevin and his crew worked to remove the conduit and piping packed into the structure they use cutting torches to remove the metal but at Cape Canaveral these tools could turn their safe worksite into an inferno after two years of drought the grasslands around Florida's Space Coast are tinder-dry a fire in the distance sends plumes of smoke into the sky [Music] as the team cuts the steel girders the constant ocean breeze scatters sparks everywhere when you're cutting on the steel the embers and the sparks 80 mile an hour wind takes that sparks out into this the grass here I got a you know I got a grass fire to contend with not only do they worry about setting grass fires but igniting materials within the structure a crew member burns through a steel casing it falls to the ground smouldering full of flammable insulation the fire crew quickly closed down the cable if this happens again the demolition team risks the structure Catching Fire ablaze in the middle of wildfire country Kevon lays over a kilometer of water lines along the ground to deal with the embers he refines his game plan if you use a torch on conduit it has wiring it's gonna start a fire to prevent that well we're going to use blue being cold cut red being hot cut with a torch he marks each and every cut point on all 26 levels in place of a torch Kevin gives Billy a less flammable tool called a demo song the saws blade rotates at over 90 300 rpm its resin fiber blade creates fewer sparks than the torches you know it cuts through pretty much everything just cuts through rubber and everything that we can't cut with a torch it's a perfect solution but it comes at a cost the saw weighs more than nine kilograms and make a couple cuts up above your head or sometimes we gotta go sideways that really puts a lot of strain on you Billy removes hundreds of kilograms of conduit and pipes during this transformation the team undoes the incredible feat of engineering MST 40 once represented in the race to trump Soviet aerospace technology the US Air Force combined its weapons and space programs scientists adapted missiles to carry strategic satellites instead of nuclear warheads [Music] these modified weapons became known as titan rockets 55 titan missions takeoff from complex 40 in the early 1990s the launch tower was replaced the 80 metre tall tower had 26 levels and incredibly it was built to move this rolling rocket repair shop housed complex diagnostic computers and elevators that took scientists into the heart of the structuring where they prepared Titan Rockets for their outer space journeys [Music] in 1992 MST 40 launched the Mars Observer rocket five years later the tower safely launched the Cassini mission to Saturn during the late 1990s the Air Force began phasing out the Titan rockets in 2005 MST 40 was retired virtually everything that made MST 40 a miracle of aerospace technology is now an obstacle for the demolition team once critical to the towers operations CDI now finds its service elevators a liability the two elevators weigh about 1300 60 kilograms each they sit in the southeast and southwest ends of the horseshoe in the tower the elevators blocked Kevin's access to the towers steel frame where the demolition experts will load explosives he must remove them while the rest of the crew continues to gut the tower Kevin dispatches longtime employee Victor Zenica to take care of the elevators Victor climbs in and burns the motors off the east elevator cars he then severs the cables releasing the counterweight he torches off the brakes one final cut and the elevator crashes to the ground at the West elevator Victor repeats the process but halfway down the elevator car gets stuck despite hours of burning Victor can't release it Kevin starts the excavator in an attempt to claw the elevator up [Music] it's messy and time-consuming but after two days they complete the job Kevin and his team makes significant progress they leap forward by ripping out sided conduit cable and elevators but as a storm rolls in CDI suffers a giant setback overnight high winds push MST 40 and the demolition team to the very edge with 22 days to implosion the project manager Kevin class has a problem overnight high winds have pushed MST 40 to the end of the runway crushing its edge a few centimeters further and the entire structure will go over Kevin calls on their supervising contractor Peter Braunger to fix the problem using excavators the crew must now pull the tower back and chain it to blocks on the runway [Music] they fix one problem but immediately faced another ms t's protective lightning towers [Music] Florida is the United States lightning capital with 100 days of electrical storms every year Cape Canaveral sits in an area nicknamed Lightning alley every one and a half square kilometers endures over 40 lightning strikes each year four giant lightning towers stand next to MST 40 to protect it from electrical storms steal guide wires tied to concrete anchors hold them up despite moving the tower to the edge of the runway two Lightning towers and their guide wires are within the projected range of the tumbling launch tower in a worst-case scenario flying debris during the implosion could snap a guide wire and abruptly release over 2,700 kilograms of tension and I see ductwork I see pipes that are running up the outside by the corner there if it comes down and hits and releases its all moving this way do I think that these are in jeopardy right now mark makes a call from a risk management standpoint given the criticality of these and the consequences of damaging it a sudden release is not worth the risk as a precaution he will move the guide wires it sounds like Mark enlists the help of tower expert David Stiles the engineers now it's time to go work David climbs over 100 meters up the towers ladder to take some measurements we're on the top day that we can see you he estimates the mast diameter with his arms once it's repositioned on the mast the cable can reach its new safe location on the ground so we're gonna remove the guy wires keep tension on them and move them toward the back of the structure to the south temporarily until the structures on the ground David will move the guide wires over 30 metres away from the tower x marks the spot in the meantime the team returns to MST 40 to continue gutting the tower but 18 knot winds whip through the stripped-down structure and make the tower dangerous for the crew every time we take something off she barks at us so Miss strong and tough it's just not cooperating as as much as I'd like to be safe everyone must dawn a yo-yo harness protection saves your life yo-yo what it is if it goes too fast it stops immediately you get a nice fast jerk harnessed up the team clears most of the piping in preparation for the next big step removing the computer consoles and heavy-duty electrical panels are located throughout the structure these large consoles are so strong that left in place they could alter the towers collapse that's right in the way of our major motion for basically like from level 1 to level 3 that whole section is being kicked out but removing that could take a lot of time so Kevin attempts a shortcut using this same method he tried on the tower siding they burn holes into the computer consoles and thread cables through the cables are tied back to excavators this time the shortcut pays off the solid computer consoles hold together as the excavators rip them out of the tower the crew saves precious time and finishes clearing the interior of the structure Kevin must now shift gears the explosives arrive soon and each one requires a handmade mount the team must cut the towers steel beams to load the explosives this is steel it actually takes about 1500 degrees to melt only one tool can do the job the crew need that torches pinpoint flame fed by propane and oxygen to burn through the beams this is what we call typically in layman's terms a box cut we cut through the web and this will free up the column once we cut it with our linear shape charges these are precision cuts these need to be cut on 45-degree angle so that the linear shaped charge can be placed with inside the flange of this column when the shaped charges explode they will slice through both ends of the column but cutting the column in two is only half the battle the purpose of this angle is so that once this member is cut with the linear shape charge it's free to move if these angles were still in place it might get stuck on this gusset so right now once this is cut this can go anywhere crews push long days to complete the work before the explosives arrive [Music] but they must proceed carefully they could destabilize the tower by burning through the steel of the wrong place sorry not to heat this up you see you hit it right there trying not to heat it up you'd please I mean you don't have to get real close to it just take it up to right here tell us to make sure we got work put the tape in there man in here can I heat this up please oh snap on you on this weakened structure a wrong cut could injure or even kill someone 100 box cuts in 18 hours only 80 more to go three weeks of non-stop work where's the team down but it's weird now the way things are all tied together I don't know what they do Kevin because he's responsible for it is maybe under more pressure than than some of the other folks here but he's solid he's solid he can handle it as the team completes the box cuts they tackle one of the most dangerous aspects of the project dropping the floor decks if they were to leave the floors in place during the implosion the floors decks could trap falling beams and hold the structure up the crew will cut out the floors from beneath their feet they've left this for last because it restricts their movement as they drop the Dex they lose access to stairwells and must walk on narrow girders to get around the floor decks also stabilize MST 40 in high winds once removed the workers have a small window of time to safely load explosives it's still all about the wind we're watching the weather now we've got our early forecasts up through Thursday so we keep watching the wind and we're also watching the longer-term potential for tropical storms you have to be aware of it the site becomes more treacherous with each second a little eerie looking and a little eerie feeling I've started a neighbor instead of MST now she's miss strong and tough so she's getting meaner that's for sure it's two days before implosion and time to implement Marc's plan for moving the guide wires on to of MST forties lightning towers one worker climbs the tower to move the cable on the mast another starts to loosen the cable anchor on the ground they work together to release the tension destabilizing the tower we're gonna try to pull in the first temporary hour and maybe get the towers are now vulnerable to wind and collapse on the ground David quickly moves the wires to their new locations no one is certain that they will hold once tension is reapplied David places the wires on their temporary anchors slowly they impose over 2700 kilograms of tension both wires hold the demolition crew is now ready for the final stage of preparation loading the explosives [Music] MSD 44 decades in the making one month of deconstruction CDI guts miles of military-grade infrastructure to prepare this rolling 26 level rocket Factory for explosives after 30 days of play Marc hopes the demolition will look something like this the tower is poised at the end of the runway a five meter drop on the north side this is the precipice that mark wants it to fall over the bulk of the towers weight already lies on the north end so it's natural inclination is to fall in this direction mark uses this to his advantage to start the fall he notches the tower like a tree by detonating shaped charges on the north end of the bottom three floors the charges sliced through the steel mark strategically places dynamite to kick out the steel support columns and beams the tower collapses towards the notch the structure is massive it's really heavy if it moves it stops and it sits down vertically we have a problem it's got to move quickly it's got to keep moving to keep the tower moving mark will detonate a second series of shaped charges shearing off the seventh level the top of the tower is now free to rotate over giving the tower the momentum to continue falling to the north over the edge of the runway and away from the Batcave explosives arrived on site the plan can now be put into action it's taken Marx daughter Stacy and a colleague 24 hours to drive the explosives down to the site [Music] she has brought powerful charges designed to cut through MST 40s tough steel they're called linear shaped charges the Air Force has deemed them so volatile and so dangerous that only essential crew was allowed within 365 meters of them Raisa Kowski works with these explosives all the time it's named that specifically because of the shape of the charge what you see here is a copper coating and inside is a explosive called RDX this is a form of a plastic explosive detonates at about 25,000 feet per second it's very fast very high velocity and they meet in the middle and then they get pushed down through the target the team needs over 700 of these charges to bring MST 40 down but the charge itself is just one part of a complex system this is what we call a pigtail assembly this is a combination of 80 green detonating cord and this actually has an explosive powder inside of it called PETN it is connected to an RDX booster RDX is another type of explosive this piece of wood is simply there to give us something to affixed to the end of the shaped charge so that it we get a nice firm flooding of the cap up against the powder inside the linear shaped charge they must assemble each one individually once cd-i fits the charges with pigtails and boosters the explosives are ready to blow that detonating cap is extremely sensitive to impact it will detonate it if you Tromp on it drop something on it you have to watch those very carefully the teen fans out across the structure to implement Marc's plan they plant the shaped charges this is how they'll work on the steel high powered explosives coat the inside of the V they're mounted so the explosives face the steel girder the V shapes the exploding charge into a sharp point the shape charges placed against the element like this these little rubber feet you see right here these keep the shape charged the precise distance from the material you want to cut what that does is that gives it time for the jet to literally form it's called the Munroe effect by placing the explosives a small distance away from the steel the two jets of explosive power emitted from either side of the V come together the precise moment they meet on the steel is when the explosive charge is at its strongest this will speed up to 27 thousand feet per second detonation creating an incredible amount of pressure on this steel literally cutting through it like a knife 25 days of hard-won ground work begin to pay off the explosives team quits Kevin's 180 box cuts to good use by putting this little box in here obviously we're allowing a place to put the shape through the web of the column this will be here it gives it a place to slide off that's all I guys and by date by putting them on at this diagonal we're trying to fill this structure in this direction by creating this diagonal or making it easier for the top of this to slide off the bottom it's a simple and effective way to get inertia working in their favor in every single project that we do explosives are nothing more than a catalyst our number one tool is gravity that's what we're doing here the explosives team must cut the pigtails on each shaped charge exactly the same length to ensure that the explosives detonate simultaneously the slightest error could create a malfunction otherwise what happens this one goes off ten milliseconds before the other it will knock that one off without detonating it now we've got a live shaped charge in the file which is absolutely unacceptable a live charge in the towers debris could detonate during cleanup when crews removed the felt our Stacey and Ray power through loading the eleventh and seventh levels some floors are easier to access than others with the catwalks and access corridors gone Stacey is forced to the edge of the towers skeleton to load it's slow going there are only two days until the implosion but hundreds of shaped charges left to load Kevin and the crew move in to help rig they do what they can from more stable platforms they strap explosives to MST 40s exterior lengths using man lives even demo designer and company president mark Nawaz Oh jumps in to help load the explosive team knows that loading the charges is only half the job they must also contain the shaped charges deadly force for every action there's an equal opposite reaction for every bit of force that is sending energy through the steel this jacket is flying off the other way with the same amount of force the jackets could project backwards at over eight kilometers per second into a crowd of military observers so by putting it on the inside of this eight shape we're actually all the coppers gonna do is hit the other side it's not gonna go Xion the crew also creates custom-built covers made of multiple layers of conveyor belt II to wrap around the charges after four days of endless loading wiring and covering the tower is finally ready it's t-minus 12 hours to implosion controlled demolition Incorporated has stripped out a structurally reinforced rocket tower and turned it into a skeletal shell of its former self in the morning the crew will learn if their painstaking preparations are enough to bring the tower down safely it's shot day it's getting real notional it's getting real close so kind of got a miss her but she's kind of been a real big paint no no this it's kind of like anything no more you love them the more you gotta hate them Rea Stacey and Kevin spread out across the tower performing last-minute inspections it's their last chance to check 30 days of preparation they inspect each det cord connection and explosive placement almost immediately Stacey finds a mistake one of the explosives is not connected to the implosion sequence you can actually see it from here ray fixes it and triple checks the line to be sure there aren't any other errors everything looks good the demolition team commences their final preparations they hook up the det cord to the initiation box Kevin will trigger the towers implosion from a shelter 305 metres away t-minus 10 minutes to implosion the media line up along the security perimeter Patrick Air Force Base is Brigadier General Susan Helms arrives to watch over the demolition the number one thing here is public safety and anybody that is not directly involved with the operation is public so what we do is we establish boundaries and maintain them Air Force Base security locks down the exclusion zone Kevin takes up his position the tower is a hair-trigger away from annihilation all right we're hooked up okay here we go Stacy mark wants to move in to assess the implosion but the heap of twisted metal is still settling the team must wait while they wait they get a rare opportunity to watch high-speed footage of the implosion the explosive pulse travels up the detonating court the lower floors go first explosion speed across the columns cutting them creating the knotch a shower of black rubber spins outward these are the fragments of the conveyor belt that held back the shape of charges debris ms t40 begins to roll forward the explosive charge continues to move up the cord it reaches the shaped charges on the seventh level the upper floors are sheared clean off accelerating the towers forward motion [Music] yeah this demolition family has never before seen their handiwork played out so vividly Oh God that's amazing look at that look at that back up one look at one molar suppose people something burning at twenty-one or twenty-two thousand feet per second or 23 feet per millisecond per thousand of a second that's instantaneous but with the high-speed videography you can literally watch the progression of the charges this is far and away the most robust and heaviest structure that we've taken down here at the Cape mark focuses in to see how the steel responded to the shaped charges this is all penetration I can see right here these two little lines are where we had a zip tie around the standoff at bot applies to chat a little bit Mark concludes that the columns that responded differently to the cutting torches also had a unique response to the explosives this is when we learn about projects afterwards and and what we learned after this shot will put to work on the next one CDI can now better predict the exact amount of explosives needed on future steel projects the Batcave is safe the lightning towers are untouched this tower is exactly where they wanted its mission accomplished in this contest of rocket science versus the art of demolition mark and his team have come out on top

Channel: Free Documentary

Views: 1,153,725

Keywords: building demolition, building demolition explosion, building demolition hotel, building demolition how it works, how to building demolition, demolition building, demolition building compilation, demolition company, demolition explosion, demolition fails, demolition of a house, demolition of buildings, nasa rocket tower demolition, rocket tower demolition, nasa rocket, nasa rocket tower, rocket tower, rocket tower nasa, documentary (tv genre)

Id: vOnbng4UlwE

Length: 50min 22sec (3022 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 16 2019

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[u/rebootyourbrainstem]

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Well alright then.

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So that was fucking cool

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why did we ever use this huge things?