Talk about a BIG toy!

Yesterday NASA introduced the four astronauts who will man the Artemis next (hopefully) year. Will be good to see Americans out in space again. And I saw this last week in the paper. While Texas can boast of the largest highway (Katy Freeway) in the world, Florida (both Red states, just saying) has the "heaviest self powered vehicle" on Earth.  

NASA sets Guinness World Record for vehicle that carried Artemis moon rocket to launch pad

NASA's Crawler Transporter 2 is now recognized as "the heaviest self-powered vehicle" by Guinness World Records.
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The Guinness World Records is spotlighting an underappreciated piece of NASA hardware.

Crawler Transporter 2 is now recognized as "the heaviest self-powered vehicle." The transporter sits beneath NASA's Artemis moon rocket and spacecraft and slowly rolls them to the launch pad prior to liftoff. 

To shoulder these vehicles, Crawler Transporter 2 weighs about 6.65 million pounds — that's roughly 15 Statues of Liberty or 1,000 pickup trucks.

“Anyone with an interest in machinery can appreciate the engineering marvel that is the crawler transporter,” Shawn Quinn, manager of the Exploration Ground Systems Program that operates the systems and facilities needed to prep and launch rockets, said in a news release. 

NASA has used crawler transporters since their construction in 1965. This particular vehicle, Crawler Transporter 2, has been modified for the Artemis missions and is now heavier than its sibling transporter originally built to carry Saturn V rockets during the Apollo Program. Crawler Transporter 2 is larger than a baseball infield and powered by locomotive and large electrical power generator engines. 

With the Artemis Program, Crawler Transporter 2 must carry the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft from NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B. It moves roughly 1 mile per hour, meaning the 4.2-mile trek at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida can take eight to 12 hours...

...John Giles, NASA’s Crawler Element Operations manager, said in the news release. “To have a Guinness Worlds Records title is icing on the cake for an extraordinary piece of equipment.”

Well done ladies and gentlemen, and good luck next year.