The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Page 16: And What Did You Do While You Were There?
| Pad B Stories - Table of Contents |
I kept track of things.
One of the very first tasks I was given to do, above and beyond answering the phone, made use of my surprising innate ability to read drawings, and it consisted in having me track things.
As in: "Where is it?"
We have by now learned that there's a lot of stuff.
And it's not always such a straightforward matter to stay on top of things.
Different things come into play for different people and organizations for different reasons.
Sometimes very different reasons, a lot of which are unobvious.
It's all well and good to have Red Milliken saunter into the trailer and inquire after the delivery of this or that piece of steel, wanting to know if it's here so as he can send a crew of ironworkers up to some difficult and expensive-to-get-to location on the tower, with an expectation that his people on the ground will be able to find the item in question and hook it to the crane so it can be lifted into place and get connected to the tower, but that's not the only reason. By far not the only reason.
What if the people back in Sheffield's own shop had conflicting information as to whether or not a column had been made and/or delivered?
What if we showed that a beam had been delivered, but had been mismarked and nobody could find the damn thing?
What if Olson Electric's general foreman had come into our trailer claiming that this or that piece of framing, upon which one of their cable tray supports needed to be attached, was not there even though Wilhoit was saying they'd already erected it last week?
What if some of the detailed particulars of one of our items had been altered, for any of a huge number of different reasons, shortly before it went out the door and was delivered to the Pad, and somebody wanted to know if the piece that had been delivered had been fabricated to the correct, altered configuration or not, before it wound up in the tower somewhere, quite possibly causing real trouble for somebody later on?
And it just goes on and on and ON. There's no end to it. None at all.
And every lost hour with this kind of stuff, is a BILLABLE hour, to somebody, and you can rest assured that Sheffield did NOT want to be that somebody who was going to be receiving the bill, quite possibly an astoundingly large bill.
So.
Sheffield's got a guy, and not only do they have a guy, but he's an insanely inexpensive guy who's only making an answering machine's wage, and whatta ya say, let's send him up there to get to the bottom of things?
Please, oh do!
And I would bound out the door with glee in my heart, a pad of paper stuffed into rear waistband of my blue jeans, a pencil clenched between my teeth, and a drawing rolled or folded or pre-sketched already on a sheet of paper, in one hand, and hightail it up on top of the pad, and, scarcely believing my incredible good luck to able to do so, scramble out on the steel and hang out with the ironworkers, and go figure out what the hell was going on, mark things up or make a whole new rough sketch of what I discovered up there in between moments of staring out across the launch pad and the wilderness which surrounded it from an eagle's aerie, and then return to the field trailer with my rough sketch, examples of which you see below.
Click them. Each one is a full and complete page, unto itself, including an enlarged version of the image up at the top, just like all the rest of these pages. They are quite detailed. There is much there to learn and marvel at. Dive in as deep as you might want to go. You already know your way around the structure. You already know how to do this.
One of the very first tasks I was given to do, above and beyond answering the phone, made use of my surprising innate ability to read drawings, and it consisted in having me track things.
As in: "Where is it?"
We have by now learned that there's a lot of stuff.
And it's not always such a straightforward matter to stay on top of things.
Different things come into play for different people and organizations for different reasons.
Sometimes very different reasons, a lot of which are unobvious.
It's all well and good to have Red Milliken saunter into the trailer and inquire after the delivery of this or that piece of steel, wanting to know if it's here so as he can send a crew of ironworkers up to some difficult and expensive-to-get-to location on the tower, with an expectation that his people on the ground will be able to find the item in question and hook it to the crane so it can be lifted into place and get connected to the tower, but that's not the only reason. By far not the only reason.
What if the people back in Sheffield's own shop had conflicting information as to whether or not a column had been made and/or delivered?
What if we showed that a beam had been delivered, but had been mismarked and nobody could find the damn thing?
What if Olson Electric's general foreman had come into our trailer claiming that this or that piece of framing, upon which one of their cable tray supports needed to be attached, was not there even though Wilhoit was saying they'd already erected it last week?
What if some of the detailed particulars of one of our items had been altered, for any of a huge number of different reasons, shortly before it went out the door and was delivered to the Pad, and somebody wanted to know if the piece that had been delivered had been fabricated to the correct, altered configuration or not, before it wound up in the tower somewhere, quite possibly causing real trouble for somebody later on?
And it just goes on and on and ON. There's no end to it. None at all.
And every lost hour with this kind of stuff, is a BILLABLE hour, to somebody, and you can rest assured that Sheffield did NOT want to be that somebody who was going to be receiving the bill, quite possibly an astoundingly large bill.
So.
Sheffield's got a guy, and not only do they have a guy, but he's an insanely inexpensive guy who's only making an answering machine's wage, and whatta ya say, let's send him up there to get to the bottom of things?
Please, oh do!
And I would bound out the door with glee in my heart, a pad of paper stuffed into rear waistband of my blue jeans, a pencil clenched between my teeth, and a drawing rolled or folded or pre-sketched already on a sheet of paper, in one hand, and hightail it up on top of the pad, and, scarcely believing my incredible good luck to able to do so, scramble out on the steel and hang out with the ironworkers, and go figure out what the hell was going on, mark things up or make a whole new rough sketch of what I discovered up there in between moments of staring out across the launch pad and the wilderness which surrounded it from an eagle's aerie, and then return to the field trailer with my rough sketch, examples of which you see below.
Click them. Each one is a full and complete page, unto itself, including an enlarged version of the image up at the top, just like all the rest of these pages. They are quite detailed. There is much there to learn and marvel at. Dive in as deep as you might want to go. You already know your way around the structure. You already know how to do this.
