Houma fabricator to build a part for NASA's Artemis program

Colin Campo, The Courier
·3 min read
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A Houma fabricator is building a part for NASA that will help put people on the moon.

In a bid to diversify their projects beyond oil and gas, Gulf Island Fabrication won an nearly $10 million contract to build part of a launchpad for NASA. The Mobile Launcher 2 is a platform designed to launch astronauts and heavy cargo to the moon, via the Orion and Space Launch System rocket. The launchpad will provide power, data, fuel, communications, and other necessary functions pre-launch. Gulf Island Fabrications is building a stand that supports the rocket before takeoff.

"Traditionally we do a lot of oil and gas fabrication, so we are trying to diversify away from oil and gas and more into overall energy and different structures for other industries including aerospace and defense," said Senior Vice President of Commercial Matthew Oubre. "Right now this is a relatively small project for Gulf Island but it's a first step to diversification."

An artists rendering of Crawler-Transport 2, with the Mobile Launcher 2 and Space Launch System Block 1B atop, as it makes its way to Launch Pad 39B in preparation for liftoff. Houma's Gulf Island Fabrications is building a piece of the Mobile Launcher 2.
An artists rendering of Crawler-Transport 2, with the Mobile Launcher 2 and Space Launch System Block 1B atop, as it makes its way to Launch Pad 39B in preparation for liftoff. Houma's Gulf Island Fabrications is building a piece of the Mobile Launcher 2.

NASA upgraded to a much larger rocket so they could send more supplies in a single trip. This meant retiring the Mobile Launcher 1, and creating a new one. The new launcher will be about seven feet taller than the original. Its base is 133 feet wide, 158 feet long, 25 feet tall, and will be supported by six 25 foot tall pedestals.

The launcher will be a crucial part of the Artemis program which plans to use the moon as a stepping stone to potentially travel to Mars. The plan is to establish an outpost that orbits the moon to will allow astronauts to turn the moon itself into a basecamp. NASA gave a briefing on the program in 2022 which can be seen here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?522488-1/nasa-briefing-moon-mars-program.

Before astronauts can get to space they need a launchpad, and the initial contract for the project was awarded to Bechtel, an engineering company, at $383 million. It was scheduled for completion in March 2023, but because of delays NASA has predicted the costs to increase to approximately $1 billion. The Mobile Launcher 2 will not be available for launch at least until November 2026.

Much of these delays and cost increases, NASA said in a lengthy report, is because of poor performance by Bechtel and can be read here: https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-22-012.pdf.

The Houma Courier / Daily Comet reached out to Bechtel for comment, but Bechtel did not respond as of the writing of this article.

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Gulf Island Fabrication will begin working on their piece in the next month, said Oubre, and should be finished rather quickly.

"We're going to be starting on the piece that we are doing, which is a small piece of the overall launcher, in the next month or so, and our piece is going to be delivered by year-end," he said. "It's basically a gigantic truss steel frame that supports the rocket sitting on the launch pad… It's basically the stand that holds the rocket up."

This article originally appeared on The Courier: Houma fabricator to build a part for NASA's Artemis program