Nasa Rocket Tower | Building Demolition | BlowDown | Free Documentary

Nasa Rocket Tower Demolition: Blowdown is an explosive four-part building demolition series profiling some of the most challenging projects of Controlled Demolition Inc. of Phoenix, Maryland.
Each of the structures, some notable, others notorious is unique and presents the team with challenges ranging from structural, to explosive and bureaucratic.Show more

In this episode, the team from CDI travels to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida to take down an obsolete rocket launch tower. Mobile Station Tower 40 (or MST 40) was once the largest mobile structure in the world. Built during the early 1990s MST 40 was 265 feet tall, and had 20 working stories. It launched both the prestigious Mars Observer as well as the Cassini mission to Saturn.
During the late 1990s, the Air Force phased out the rocket type that was launched from the tower, and in 2005 MST 40 was retired.

The demolition team has just 30 days to prepare the tower for explosives and bring her down safely. They struggle to work in a brush fire hazard area where frequent electrical storms and high winds heighten the risk of working on the tower.

Adding to their challenges are two sets of lightning towers that lie close to the tumbling tower’s intended path and a subterranean control bunker that lies beneath it. So that neither be harmed during the implosion the demolition team must pull off a precise drop.

To achieve the precision they need CDI uses over 700 powerful steel-cutting explosives called shaped charges. These incendiary devices are high-velocity explosives – they employ the same technology as armor-piercing shells and warheads. The team uses the charges to cut through the tower’s entirely metal structure.

CDI comes in to work on MST 40 during the cusp of hurricane season. They have just one month to prepare, load, and implode the tower. Major concerns are undermining the hurricane-proof rocket tower’s integrity, gutting hundreds of thousands of structural steel while remaining on schedule, and manually moving the tower 75 feet.