,
4 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
By the way, here‘s another super-cool thing about this picture. Notice how the concrete on the Space Shuttle launch pad is disrupted? It wasn’t that way before the Shuttle launched. What caused it? The NOISE of the launch busted the concrete. /1 
2/ What really happened was that NASA built the landing pad during the Apollo program by dredging the silty sand from the swamps on Cape Canaveral. They piled up the sand and put concrete slabs over it. That sand does NOT have great geotechnical properties, but it was available.
3/ The launch pads were later converted from Apollo to the Shuttle program. The Space Shuttle made so much vibration (i.e., noise) that it shook the entire pad including the sand underneath the pad. That caused the sand to slowly slump and slide downhill under the concrete slabs.
4/ This caused the slabs at the top to cave in, because the sand under them was missing. The slabs at the bottom popped up, because too much sand was squeezed beneath them. The Shuttle launched, and BOOM, the concrete popped out. So not only the Moon has regolith launch issues!
