The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Page 22: Platforms. Framing. Steel.
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You're on the RSS.
You're out in front, and down low.
And you're looking back up and across, toward the Hinge Column, and toward the FSS near-totally obscured, behind everything else.
Looking back up, steeply.
Almost straight up, but not quite.
Similar scope of view, more or less, as the image on the previous page, but from a more-forward, past Line B, point of view, and looking up from below of course, instead of down from above.
The big Stub Cluster at Line B-2 elevation 171'-2" is now just out of frame top, far left.
The mid and upper portions of the Hinge Column, with its plethora of "stacked dinner plates" Crossovers, all the way up to the Upper Bearing Access Platform, are now partially visible, peeking around from behind the intervening steel of the RSS. Having come this far in our journey, we are by now well-familiar with how things, as actually constructed, can differ from the very same things, as depicted on the contract drawings. Modifications. Additions. Deletions. Individually, or as any number of a bewildering array of combinations. And in this photograph we see an addition, loud and clear. In the top-right corner of the frame, we can see the dark shadowed undersides of a stack of three cable tray crossover platforms, round in general aspect, each with a peculiar squared-off "ear" silhouetted against blue sky, as the first set of crossovers beneath the Hinge Column Top Bearing. Returning to the drawing, we can see that there are only two cable tray crossovers shown. Only two runs of cable tray. Happens all the time. Yet another way that we can find ourselves getting fooled, if we're not careful about things. But by now, we're used to it. We're savvy enough to know stuff like this is sprinkled around, all over the place, and we're comfortable with it, and we're not going to be fooled by it, right?
At close range, a portion of the platform framing that takes you from the RSS across to the FSS, when the RSS is in the Mated position, dominates the lower third of the frame.
Electrical wiring to one of the numerous catwalk lighting fixtures which both towers were bristling with can be seen snaking haphazardly around the corner of the platform steel. Rely on the fact that the electricians did not install it that way, but instead, after it was installed, properly, exactly as per the plans and specifications, something occurred which caused the wire to be moved out of the way, probably by Wilhoit's ironworkers, but perhaps someone else, to allow some work, modification, repair, test procedure, or other unknown set of actions.
Along the side of the perimeter beam extending from the platform framing corner over to the area out of frame to the left, the heads of two sets of four high-strength A325 structural bolts can be seen where members coming in from the Hinge Column side of the platform have unseen clip-angles that tie to the web of this perimeter framing beam. A close look at the paint around the leftmost set of bolts reveals that it has been touched-up, and is a noticeably lighter shade of gray (as is the short stub beam on the other side, which this set of bolts holds in place), and the electrical wire is aimed very nearly at that very same location, giving us to believe that it was originally run very close to this steel connection, and then something caused the connection to get reworked (or perhaps simply added in, as a part of completely new framing in this area) in some way, forcing the wire to be roughly removed from the area of work, and once removed, it's no longer the concern of the parties who did the removing, and the electricians are not about to touch it unless somebody pays them for the extra work, and no end of three-way wrangling between NASA and a pair of craft-labor groups most likely ensued, and until the matter was resolved, one way or another, this wire was orphaned, in place, and would stay that way.
I have no recollection of any work being done here, but this was when I was still very new at things, and had no hand in such matters.
Later, that would change, and I would find myself locked in battle with people who worked furiously to make everything somebody else's fault, complete with schedule and cost burdens, and oh the fun we had with that stuff! For now, with our dangling wire, it comes down to why did somebody have to come along and alter things?
NASA worked mightily to make it the contractor's fault, every time, even when the alterations came at the hand of their own directives, and I always marveled at the amount of work people and organizations would put into trying to shift the blame off of themselves, placing it on to someone else. Every. Single. Time.
Despite all that complicated whodunnit, when I took this photograph, I never even noticed the dangling wire. I just liked the angle of the shot, and the outré complexities of the visuals it renders, looking back up and across toward the FSS, and I got the wire, and the little story that goes with it, completely by accident.
Above that, the OMBUU Access Catwalk, which we've met before already, and is located at elevation 163'-9".
In the top left portion of the frame, left of the OMBUU Access Catwalk, impossibly, a fair amount of the FSS is also visible, through the absurdly-dense intervening snarl of light, shadow, shapes, and angles of the RSS steel.
Far top-right corner of the frame, more of the FSS is visible, but this time it's the extended boom of the Hammerhead Crane with its yellow lifting block beneath it, over one hundred and seventy feet above you against the background of a clear blue Florida Sky.
Let us now, on the next page, aim our camera across and down, and a little more to the right, shall we?
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