My dad retired from the NASA Michoud facility in New Orleans East. I remember seeing them anchored in the intercoastal canal near the facility. They transported the big external tank that was on the space shuttle during launch.
I was on a run in the 90s pushing parts for the mobile launch pad for NASA from Houston to Cape Canaveral . When I would drop those barges in Cape Canaveral NASA at that time had their own fleet boats complete with the NASA logo on the stacks and their crew all had on the NASA uniform jumpers with the patches on them. The first time I made that run I asked my mate : Was that deckhands or astronauts out there on the tow. LoL 😆it was pretty cool 😎
Having grown up on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers I'm loving these posts. I now live a short distance from the Ohio, mile 497. Thank you for your time and trouble making these videos. I'm old now but I still manage to get to river everyday to watch the the tows go by. Keep up the good work.👍👍
Hey Mike. I sold it back in 2015, but I had one of those large river going houseboats you see on the river. I don't know how many times I came through and past Aurora. We liked to run it between Cincy where we homeported it and either all the way down to Louisville or did weekends in Madison or at Turtle Creek Marina in Florence just above the Belleterra Casino. By land, I loved exploring all of the southern Indiana river towns like Vevay. Over in the Kentucky side, my favorite place in that section of the river is Rabbit Hash. It was too bad they had no place to dock there and no real way to get in there anyway. Too shallow and too much junk in the water to safely run a boat that needed at least four feet of draft. You live in a great place to see and enjoy the river.
Love watching your videos, I used to watch barges at Ashland Oil dock in Evansville, IN. Back in high school 1974 summer. Ate on a couple boats while dad pumped gas off.
You just can never tell what kind of vessels and what they might be hauling on the rivers. I used to see the coolest things when I boated the Ohio. At least one time, I saw a woman that was swimming the entire length of the river. I had been hearing the radio traffic about her and reports on the TV about her. She just had a couple of kayakers around her. A few years ago, it took like three years to get all the pieces transported all the way from Germany then on to the river system with those huge sections of the final assembly headed for West Virgina, that when set up, processed the stuff that was gotten by fracking into usable petroleum and gases. Those pieces were huge. Another cool thing out there were all the wild, home made primitive craft people were running down the rivers. Everything from recreated keel and shanty boats to rafts made from blue plastic barrels. I always loved that and it's one of the things I miss about the rivers.
As someone who grew up in Paducah, I’ve seen the River industry in the background and never had any idea how it actually worked. Thanks for showing me.
I'm a dock operator at Transmontaigne in St. Francisville, LA / Mile Marker 260. I saw this thing pass the other day and was curious. Pretty cool stuff.
This was very interesting! Thanks for sharing. We live a stones throw from Lock 15 and the I 280 bridge on the Illinois side. Looking very forward to future updates. Safe travels.
Pegasus travels all the way to Port Canaveral, through the lock and up to the Kennedy Space Center. Space Shuttle external tanks were delivered that way. During construction, the lock was modified to be large enough for that vessel.
Yep, your right. I made my comment before the end of the vid before I saw the name. From a distance it looked like a different vessel with the propulsion system attached to the stern of the barge. When Capt Kyle showed the close up with the name and the pusher tug on the stern, I knew I should have waiting to the end of the vid. I saw all the Shuttle external tanks arrive at the Cape up thru 1984 as I was the Officer in Charge of Station Cape Canaveral. Now retired since 1994, CWO4 USCG. Thanks for the reply comment.
Don’t think I’ve seen that NASA (Never a straight Answer) barge before. There’s another that use to come out of New Orleans that carried the Shuttle External Fuel tank from there to Cape Canaveral on the Wire behind a tug. That was a handful as well getting it thru the Canaveral Locks and the Barge canal to the Indian River when the wind was blowing.
NASA builds the rockets in Decatur, AL. They have a couple of special built boats that haul the biggest rockets. I live on the Tennessee River, near Danville, TN. They travel north past us, to Ohio river, then down Mississippi River, around the tip of Florida, and on to Cape Kennedy. RS Rocketship is ULA boat name. The Tennessee TomBigbee is to shallow, or locks too narrow, I’ve been told both reasons. Never mind, read your reply below, you already know about Rocketship, aka bridge killer!
They used to haul rocket stages on the M/V Delta Mariner. They traveled the Tennessee River to the Ohio. One night the ship Hit the Egner's Ferry bridge on Ky. Lake and destroyed a section of the bridge. That section of highway was closed for many months.
@@marktwained Yes, I saw that recently. I fished Ky. Lake for years, until the Asian carp pretty much ruined that, and would see it occasionally out on the main lake.
I lived over in Clarksville when that happened and ended up selling one of my "pre-collision" sunset images of that bridge to the National Steel Bridge Alliance for their calendar the following year. It was a pain to get around LBL while it was closed.
@@johnniewelbornjr.8940 Grew up on KY Lake: the old Eggner Bridge was the only way across KY and Barkley between 79 and the damn at Calvert C. We had a camp at Southern Komfort, I worked at the Boy Scout camp a few summers.
They've done so since that start of the program. One of the reasons they got to the moon first. The Saturn-V stages came by water (I think even the one that came from California) so could be shipped complete. The N-1 (Soviet moon rocket) came by rail so needed much more assembly at the launch site.
PEGASUS!!! Man, My brother & I got caught in the wake of that massive boat in the turn at Bass Landing in my 18' Center Console. HAHA Talk about White Knuckle!
Id you were on the St. Lawrence River, with that thing, you'd have Ottawa Politian's Freezing your Bank Accounts and lock you up for Transmitting Government Secrets.. You know, the Guy, I mean..
That’s how they travel, they start around Decatur Al on the Tennessee, up to the Ohio then back to the Mississippi down to the Industrial Canal to Michoud Slip
