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The NASA Commercial Crew @Commercial_Crewtweet

The #Crew4 astronauts have been busy getting ready for their upcoming mission to the @Space_Station!

The crew recently participated in simulations focused on undocking and departing the orbiting lab, emergency preparedness training, and more: https://go.nasa.gov/3KhJllY

Also shows the image below.

David Parise @davidparise2 tweets

What is that beast of a vehicle?

and Scottish @Scottish720 replies

Pretty sure it’s a military armoured truck in the case the crew / ground crew are on top of the tower and something goes wrong they zip line away from the tower and into the trucks and zoom away from the pad

Questions:

  1. Will the NASA Commercial Crew "zip line away from the tower and into" this "military armoured truck" in case of emergency?
  2. Does this armoured truck have a name?

Possibly related (maybe there's a bit of a similar vehicle in the photos)


NASA Commercial Crew tweeted image March 4, 2022 https://twitter.com/Commercial_Crew/status/1499752039420731394

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For #1, it certainly sounds like there's something zip-wire-ish involved:

...slide-wire baskets carrying astronauts and ground personnel from the top of the crew access tower

For #2, it is a "MRAP" (mine-resistant ambush-protected) vehicle of a type designed for use as general-purpose armoured transport/patrol vehicles in Iraq/Afghanistan. A group of them seem to have been acquired in about 2015.

WP clarifies that the term covers about a dozen types from different manufacturers - there was no single model - and while it mentions NASA, it doesn't say which type. However, it looks like this was a BAe Caiman - that article mentions NASA use, with a picture looking very much like this one, and it seems to have the distinctive bulge on the sides.

During the Shuttle era, they used ex-Army M113 armoured personnel carriers, now phased out.

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