It’s not always common knowledge what local industries are doing and creating, but a recent project for G&G Steel garnered wide exposure, as the local industry completed a product for NASA through a contract with Dynetics.

G&G Steel vice president Bret Gist said this is the first time the company has ever contracted with Dynetics on a project. The final product is a full-scale model of a Space Launch System (SLS) Core Stage, called the Core Stage Pathfinder.

“The size of this project falls in line with many of the USACE projects we do that last about one and a half to two years,” Gist said. “This is a NASA project with a lot of attention.”

A ceremony was held to mark the completion of construction and assembly of the gigantic steel article at G&G Steel’s Cordova facility.

According to information provided by nasaspaceflight.com, Radiance Technologies and Dynetics were contracted by NASA to build and deliver the Pathfinder, and G&G Steel performed the final welding and assembly of the steel structure.

The companies will turn over Pathfinder to NASA after they deliver it by barge from G&G’s Cordova facility on the Black Warrior River to the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans, La., sometime in the next month or so.

NASA will use Pathfinder at MAF, the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida to practice handling the size and weight of a fully assembled SLS Core Stage at those different locations and transportation between them before they have to start doing it with the real thing as early as 2018.

The Pathfinder was designed to mimic the “form and fit” of a real Core Stage. It has the same weight, center of gravity, size and shape as a finished, empty SLS Core Stage, which is how the rocket will be delivered by barge from MAF to Stennis and/or KSC.

The Pathfinder weighs about 228,000 pounds, is about 27.5 feet in diameter and about 212 feet in length from the top of the forward skirt to the bottom of the engine nozzles.

After the Pathfinder gets to MAF, the remaining simulated elements that need to be added will be attached there.

Although the Pathfinder is just as large and heavy as a Core Stage, it is not structurally engineered like one. “It’s just form and fit, it’s not function,” Flores added.

In addition to the Pathfinder, G&G Steel is completing two massive lift “spiders” at the Cordova facility that will also soon be delivered to NASA. One of the spiders and a lift ring were on display at the ceremony, and the second spider was being completed elsewhere in the facility.

The spiders themselves are big and weigh about 45,000 pounds each, Flores said. “It is beefy structure,” Flores said, noting that the spider is too heavy to leave bolted on the structure when it is oriented horizontally.

Although the reason for Pathfinder’s existence is still in front of it, there has been some thought about a final resting place when its work is complete.

“We’ve already been talking with the (U.S.) Space and Rocket Center (in Huntsville) about whether or not they can have it as some kind of a display,” Flores noted. “They’re working that, not at the (NASA) Headquarters level but at the center director level. They’re making plans to do something with it (and not) let this go out to some boneyard.”