The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B

A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.

Page 25: Looking Back Across From Stair Tower 3, One Hundred Feet Above The Surrounding Greenery.

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And down we have come, once again, still looking in the same general direction toward the northeast as before, but this time we've had to come off of the main body of the RSS and get down below its great mass by going over to Stair Tower 3 and descending to the landing at elevation 101'-4½" in order to get this view showing us the base of the Hinge Column and the lower levels of the FSS.

And more Stairs of Doom, too.

Good old Stair Number 1 and Stair Number 2.

I would visit them whenever I could, and truth be told, that was more often than you might imagine.

All the way down to the bottom riser, of course. With or without any safety gates down at the very bottom. Both before and after we furnished and installed those safety gates. It was fine by me, either way.

I liked doing that a lot for whatever reasons, but mostly because the sensations down there were... shall we say, heightened, and the place was just beautiful in an uncanny and indescribable way with a clear view of the ocean and the surrounding wilderness reaching off into the far hazy distances from beneath the dark brooding immensity of the RSS with a fantastically-technical foreground standing against it in a contrast that could not be more stark and breathtaking, and I did so whenever the occasion would permit, and occasionally even when it would not.

Stairs 1 and 2 were yet another manifestation of the otherness, of the uncanniness, of Pad B, and an intense and obvious one at that. They were a totem of Pad B. A representation in solid form that speaks of the larger, speaks as a mountain speaks, in a near-inaudible whisper of the spiritual beyond-outré nature of the place to those who can hear the whispers.

And these whispers are not to be taken lightly, not to the slightest degree, although the world teems with people who seek to diminish and dismiss it all.

Because they cannot hear the whispers, and think therefore that things of other can have no value and do not even exist.

Certainly, there were places in the world that had larger and even more imposing moving objects. Handled more-exotic high-energy matériels, and were as-well crafted to contain their explosive reactions. Had much larger lifts and hoisting gear. Were also constructed in the service of goals that transcend. Had more platform framing covered with steel-bar grating taking you to hidden recesses and unexpected prospects overlooking their surroundings. Serviced bigger equipment. Dealt with equally high-tech systems and hardware. Were more labyrinthine, taller, and complex. Were... filled with no end of superlatives of form, of function, and of the artistic synergy that function can impart into form when all of the planets align just-so.

But nowhere else in the world have I seen or otherwise learned about a place where so much of this, to such an extreme degree, all came together in the same place, as it did on Pad B.

And this is the attraction of Pad B, and of all other places which share its aspects of titanic otherness and uncanniness. And this is what draws those of us who are drawn to these sorts of places, filled with these sorts of things.

The world is populated with people who look at this and are are left cold by it. Who fail to resonate with it. And those of us who get that frisson of otherness from it will never be able to share our intensely emotional reactions to places like this with all of those people, no matter how hard we try. And the sensation is a deeply pleasurable one, and it's sad that we cannot import that frisson of deep pleasure to those others who fail to receive on these wavelengths.

Stairs 1 and 2 provided access to the MLP from the RSS, but during my entire five-year period out on Pad B, the RSS was very nearly always retracted in the demate position as you see it here, where the MLP could not have been beneath it in the first place, and in the second place not one single time did they ever roll the MLP out there, and so, without an MLP to step down upon, just as neat and casual as you might step from the very bottom stair riser coming down from the upstairs bedrooms, to the level surface of your living room floor, you instead had yourself a nice five-story free drop from that last riser, right there, the literal next step in front of you, directly down to the ever-patient concrete of the Pad Deck.

It was definitely not a place to lose your footing, needless to say.

And of course that's exactly what made it such a cool place to visit every once in a while.

That, plus the astounding ambiance and view, of course, which, again of course, this photograph fails miserably at conveying the sensations of.

Ah well...

I'm doing the best I can.

I'll suppose that you too must put a little work into this stuff, and those of you who resonate better, those of you with the better, more accurate, more vivid, imaginations, will gain the greatest rewards.

I want to put you there, but I cannot do it alone. I cannot do it all by myself.

We will work together, and we will do the best we can... together.

This is a pretty good viewpoint to consider the lower reaches of the FSS from, so let us spend a little time with that, and see if we can gain a bit more understanding of some of the things that dwell there.

Piping.

It's all over the place.

What does it do? What's it there for?

Let us start picking this one apart, ok?

Keeping in mind that no single drawing shows all of it, even when the parts that are not shown on any given drawing are immediately adjacent to the parts that are.

It's all different systems, and different systems are shown on different drawings, sometimes with their adjacent systems as well, to let people know what's nearby and what to be aware of for reasons of clearance, support frameworks, safety, and any number of other concerns, but not always. Not even most of the time, really.

So let us begin with things we can find easily enough on the drawings, and then work farther into it, via process of elimination, and in so doing hopefully manage to identify what we're seeing, and what we're curious about.

Our photograph, unfortunately, is of far less than fully-adequate quality. Had I known at the time, what I'd be doing with the image forty literal years later, I might have done things a little differently, of course, but that's a bridge that can never be crossed. Having said that, we can try to extract what we can, nonetheless.

And here's our area of interest.

We see six separate vertical runs of white piping, and drawing 79K10338 sheet M-9 will identify five of them, and for ensured accuracy, we can start with the leftmost run of pipe, which is the only one extending all the way down into the concrete of the Pad Deck, and it also has a cleanout stub coming off to its right, just above the concrete, and that's positive I.D. for the Safewaste Line coming down from the toilet up at the 220' elevation of the FSS. And, may as well make mention of it right now, they really didn't want you loitering around in that toilet, and a part of me strongly suspicions that's why they spent as little effort on keeping things clean in there as they did. It wasn't quite third-world, but it wasn't missing by much, either. You went there because you had to, and you did not linger.

We now know what five of the six lines running up the south side of the FSS are, but we were shown their identities in two separate elevation views, and yes, there are dimension lines coming off of the southeast FSS Main Framing Perimeter Column to let us know where they all live, but it would be nice to find a drawing that shows them all together, and it turns out that we have a drawing that does that, but I needed to establish positive identification of this stuff as running up the side of the FSS first, and the only drawing that does that for us adequately is the one that splits 'em in to two separate groups, our good friend 79K10338 sheet M-9.

Just a few sheets farther into the package, we find 79K10338 sheet M-13, and this is the one that lets us see all these pipe runs together, and also shows us how four of them tuck back under the FSS at Elevation 75'-0", and now that you've see it, maybe you can understand why I did not use it at first. It's very confusing, and isn't this stuff bad enough already? That said, it's rock-solid about things, and take note of those highlighted 1'-6" dimensions between all five of those pipe runs coming up the south side of the FSS.

Every bit of it is 1'-6" on-center away from the adjoining pipe runs.

All except for that one straggler, the second one from left in our photograph, and that little guy is crammed in between the Safewaste line and the 3" Potable Water line, and it's looking close enough to half way between them to call 9 inches, on-center away from the pair on either side of it, and it's for sure that it's not showing on any of our drawings, but then again, our drawings only concern themselves with water, so, process of elimination kicks in, and that means it's not water, whatever else it might be.

So then. What is that? What is it there, second from leftmost on the photograph?

And from here, we have to go from inference. By a process of deductive reasoning. And we can start out by surmising what it is not.

Close examination of the drawings at hand (which are incomplete, unfortunately, but which include nearly everything), tells us that it is not...

Water of any kind. Chilled, Firex, Potable, or Safewaste.

It is also not any kind of Electrical conduit.

It is also not any kind line for fuel or oxidizer, hypergolic or LH2/LOX, or any of the systems that supported fuel and oxidizer, including Helium or Nitrogen, in either gaseous or liquid form (and Gaseous Nitrogen is ubiquitous, and can be found all over place, doing a million different things for a million different reasons, but not here, not this particular bit of piping).

Nor is it Ammonia (which is a horrifying thing in its pure undiluted form, and if you ever see the word anhydrous with it, that's telling you it's the pure stuff, and... look out), which was used as coolant in the Orbiter's Environmental Control System and which I've only found a single reference to, on 79K24048 sheet M-7 (listed over there on the left side in the yellow highlighting as "NH3", which is chemistry shorthand for ammonia, which is a small molecule made from one nitrogen atom in combination with three hydrogen atoms), as an inch and a half stainless steel tube, vent line, from some Bulkhead Plate A-125070, RSS Elevation 135'-7" Side 3, to "Above Elevation 212'-1", also on the RSS, and no, I'm not going to chase that down for you right now.

And we find ourselves rapidly running out of things that it might be, whether mundane or exotic, with the final exception of compressed air, which was used all over the place and makes for an excellent "power source" for equipment and tools (among many other uses) and which does not constitute the potential fire ignition hazard that electrical systems pose (and in an environment where hydrogen gas and other equally-cheerful things might be expected to mix with atmospheric oxygen in explosive concentrations upon occasion whether by design or by accident, things that can make sparks become significant hazards and are to be eliminated whenever and wherever possible), and the presumption shall therefore default to this being a Compressed Air line.

Alas, I have no drawings for the Compressed Air System on the towers, and must instead, infer via the use of drawings that I do have.

And we immediately learn that picking through the mechanical drawings (and later on, the electrical drawings too), can be a lot like looking at the bottom line on an eye-chart in an optometrist's office. You find yourself dealing with a bunch of itsy-bitsy teeny-tiny little symbols, some of which may be smudged on the drawing to the point of rendering them either invisible, or indistinguishable from equally-small symbols depicting completely different stuff, and yeah, this is where a surprising amount of time goes, out on the job site, when questions arise. Somebody's gotta go through the whole drawing package, all umpty-hundred sheets of it, looking for fly specks, motes, grains of sand, and no end of other jolly stuff.

But it's all there, and it's all there to see, and so you get comfortable, get your good close-work reading glasses on, and settle in for it, 'cause the only thing being in a hurry with this stuff will do for you, will be to cause you to make mistakes, and that is something you cannot afford to do.

Also, on our Walkabout of The Pad, my intense drilling down into absurd levels of detail with stuff is also allowing you to see a lot of drawings that you would otherwise not get to see, and every last one of those drawings is loaded with other stuff, all of which is neat and cool in and of itself, and all of which stands on its own just fine simply on Artistic Merit, and yeah, you just walkabout. You just do a nice easy walkabout through this marvelous land filled with no end of strange and wonderful things, none of which you ever expected to be crossing paths with in the first place, and all of which possess interestingness on multiple levels of function, form, and that peculiar quality about this kind of stuff that draws you in to it, if you're one of those people who resonates with it.

So yeah. It's all cool. It's all fun. And it's all here for you to enjoy yourself with, looking at it.

Regards our detective work, inferring that our Mystery Line is in fact a Pneumatics Line, and is in fact a Compressed Air Line, the evidence stacks up pretty well in favor of that proposition, and the Isometric-View Schematic of this area, and the Plan-View Schematics of this area, and the Detail-View Isometric of this area all agree that at someplace or another, even if it's not on this contract and not a part of these drawing packages, somebody is going to have to finish off the installation of what is very likely a 125 PSI compressed air line, because other parts of the Pad are already plumbed for 125 PSI compressed air, and it seems a bit much to think that they would not go with what they already have, and since most tools use 70 to 90 PSI air, this gives us the margin we might need for this sort of equipment, and in the absence of any further evidence to the contrary, I'm going to call this line out as being 125 PSI compressed air, and here it is, labeled, along with all of its little friends, on an enlarged crop from our photograph.

Case closed.

So.

Back to Piping.

What might we delve into next?

More Mystery Piping and more inference-based detective work.

But this time, it's Hypergol.

Fuel and Oxidizer.

Monomethyl Hydrazine (MMH) and Nitrogen Tetroxide (N2O4).

Horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE stuff.

Don't ever get crosswise with Hypergol ok? 'Cause it could very well be the last thing you ever did.

And this time we go in reverse order as last time, and you get the labeled enlargement crop of the photograph first, with the Hypergol stuff labeled in white, and while I was here I went ahead and tossed in the PCR Drain Water Trap as well as an ECS Duct in black, and we're not gonna deal with those last two items here and now, but you may rely on the fact that we'll very definitely be getting to them at some point later on, ok? Just a couple of further-identified pipes, no more than that, for now.

At the moment, we're going to be digging in solely to the Hypergol.

And it's not going to be easy, because the pipe runs in question are not included in any of the drawing packages which I have in my possession, and some of this work was done before I originally showed up, working for Sheffield Steel, and some of it was done during the time I was there with Sheffield Steel, and some of it was done after that, when I was with Ivey Steel, so it's gonna be a little choppy, right from the outset.

The Hypergol Pipe Trenches went in, new construction, as part of the 79K10338 work that created the FSS on the Pad Deck, which was done by Wilhoit, and you can see it here on 79K10338 sheet S-5. All well and good, except that there is no indication as to which Trench is which.

But the lines themselves went in later, as part of an unknown drawing package, and I was brand new at the pad, wholly and completely ignorant of everything that was going on around me at the time, and whoever it was that installed these pipe runs did so without my having any awareness of it at all.

So ok. So we just looked at a drawing of the Pad Deck from before my time, and now we can look at a drawing from when I was there with Sheffield, and we see that 79K14110 sheet V-12 has gone ahead and labeled things, but only partway, and all we get is the Fuel side of things, which is shown as the southern trench in the pair, but at least it's a start.

And to gain any detailed understanding of what is turning out to be surprisingly complicated and difficult to figure out, we're going to have to take a little side-trip over to the world of Line Codes.

And Line Codes are one of those things that has the power to make your eyes roll back in your head, and knock you fully unconscious, sound asleep, because it's murderously tedious, but it's also the only way they can keep track of this crap, so we grit our teeth and give it a look. I gave you the lightest little tap on the shoulder with it, just above, for Ammonia, but we did not have to actually use the drawing, or the numbers thereupon, and it wasn't so bad at all, was it? I was being nice to you, without telling you I was being nice to you.

And now, at the present moment, we find ourselves heading directly toward a Line Codes Tabulation (that harkens from the time after Sheffield, when I was with Ivey Steel) that is going to tell us, among an annoying blizzard of other stuff, the numbers for our two pairs of Hypergol pipe runs (one for supply, and one for return, for both pairs) that come sprouting up out of the ground at the base of the FSS on Side 3 and run straight up vertically until they get to the 100'-0" level, where they promptly do some pretty goddamned devious bullshit, as they lay over horizontal and head outbound along the Pipe Support Truss that sits on the Strut taking us over to the Hinge Column and Crossover Platform Number 1. And in our tabulation we see that the numbers are as follows: For Oxidizer, for N2O4 which is shorthand for Nitrogen Tetroxide, Line Code 4102 is Return, and 4202 is Supply. For Fuel, for MMH which is shorthand for Monomethyl Hydrazine, Line code 5102 is Return, and 5202 is Supply. And we've only done four numbers, and already I find myself falling asleep. But I'm gonna fight it off, and persevere, anyway.

And here's 79K24048 sheet M-3 with the line codes for the N2O4 and MMH plumbing we're interested in, highlighted for you to admire.

Armed with our Line Codes, we can press forward with things, and wherever we see an inscrutable little 4101, or 4201, or 5101, or 5201 next to a pipe, anywhere on the drawings, we now know, for dead-certain, what kind of truly awful stuff is surging within, and the Truly Awful Stuff in question, is Hypergol.

So ok. So now let's take a look at 79K24048 sheet M-154, which ever-so-conveniently cuts a slice right through those Hypergol Lines running up Side 3 of the FSS, damn near exactly half way between where they sprout up vertically from inside the Hypergol Trenches down at surface of the Pad Deck, and where they go into Devious Mode, laying over horizontally, headed for Crossover Number 1 on the Hinge Column, and of course they labeled this stuff goof-ass, giving us the line codes for N2O4, but not the goddamned MMH, and giving us "Supply" and "Return" for MMH, but not for the fucking N2O4, but fuck those assholes, we're smart enough to work past their bullshit with confidence, and so we shall.

And we see that there are two pairs of Hypergol Pipes marked as "EXST" (for Existing) and these are the ones we're interested in. There's a lot more piping and tubing in there, too, including still more Hypergol (and it's not even the same kind of Hypergol, and instead of being MMH it's shown as N2H4 and that's because MMH is monomethylhydrazine, and N2H2 is straight hydrazine without the stupid methyl CH3 group of atoms hanging off the side of one of those nitrogens), but all of that "a lot more piping and tubing" stuff is visually too small, and the resolution of our photograph is insufficient to show any of it, and of course, when the photo was taken, much of it had yet to even come into existence in the first place, anyway.

Our Hypergol Lines of interest are only 2½ and 3 inches in diameter (they tell you that on the Line Codes Tabulation), but they're insulated (well... mostly, anyway), and that's what makes them as large as they appear in the photo, and of course the white exterior of that insulation really adds to their visual prominence.

There are places where there is no insulation on these lines, and in those places, in the photograph, the lines simply disappear, but you may rely on the fact that they are still there anyway.

You may be wondering why there's insulation "here" but not "there" with these pipes, and that's because work was still in progress on them, and once they're wrapped in that nice fat white sleeve of insulation... well... "I guess we're done with it "here" Lou, so let's move on and finish this work over "there", how 'bout?"

And what we have is two sets of them, separated by a fair bit of open space between them, and the northernmost pair is more than half way to the centerline of the FSS from the Main Framing Column on the FSS's southwest corner. The southernmost pair is more or less right on that column. Very very close to that column.

Ok, fine.

Now what?

Well... here's where it gets devious, and here's where I wish I had a better photograph of this stuff, but I do not, and this is all you're ever going to get out of me with it. Sigh.

A casual glance at the photograph clearly shows how the two separate pairs (but, for the full length of their vertical runs, both pairs are overlapping and visually single in appearance in my photograph) of pipes run up the back of the FSS on Side 3, and then they lay over on their side, with gaps in the insulation rendering them invisible where they take that horizontal bend, and then you can see both pairs once again, and you can see them clearly, running along the Pipe Support Truss that's on the Strut headed over to the Hinge Column, and Crossover Platform Number 1.

Except that's not what's happening at all.

What actually happens is that both of the goddamned overlapping MMH lines lose their insulation and very stealthily dive horizontally, heading slightly away from us to the right, into the darkness of the FSS just behind the Perimeter Column which blocks them from view, just below the Level 100'-0" Main Framing Steel, and from there...

...that's it, all gone, and we never see them again.

I do have photographs which show that pair of MMH lines over on the other side of the Pipe Support Truss, not real well, but well enough, but we haven't gotten that far with things chronologically, so you'll just have to wait. And hope that I remember to make note of this stuff when we get to the upcoming photographs in question.

Meanwhile, the other pair, the northernmost pair of N2O4 lines, also lose their insulation, lay over on their side, quit overlapping, and run horizontally, invisibly, toward us to the south along the back of the FSS, just below the Level 100'-0" steel, and then pick back up visually with nice white insulation to let you see them, loud and clear, no longer overlapping, as they both (Supply and Return) bend back away from us and run left-to-right across our line of sight out toward Crossover Number 1 along the near side of that Pipe Support Truss shown here in 79K14110 sheet S-10. Here's a few more details for it on 79K14110 sheet S-12, just to help you get a better feel for how substantial this thing is, and why you cannot see through it to locate stuff on its far side.

As you can see, this thing is pretty sturdy, and that doesn't even take into consideration the goddamned Strut that it's draped over.

And the pair of MMH lines that disappeared into the darkness of the FSS came back out on the far side of that trusswork running along the Strut, and in our photograph...

Nope. You're never gonna be seeing anything over there on the far side of that thing.

And because we don't have the drawings that put those pipes on the tower, we're going to have to make do with what we've got, in order to understand how that stuff runs full-length along both sides of our Pipe Support Truss.

And we don't have much, but fortune was with us, and we wound up with just enough.

The full length of that Truss is split into two pieces on the 79K24048 Mechanical drawings, and we'll look at both of 'em, ok?

79K24048 sheet M-162 keeps us on the half that connects to the FSS, and although it's pretty suboptimal for our present purposes, it very definitely shows us both runs of Hypergol piping, and it further shows us that the N2O4 stuff is on the south side of that Truss (which is the side we see in the photograph), and the MMH stuff is on the north side of the Truss. Complete with matching Line Code Numbers for both flavors of Hypergol.

79K24048 sheet M-217 is quite a bit less wonderful as to the labeled identifications of things, but it includes Section A (unlabeled, but I went ahead and put labels on it for you), and that little guy is spot on for showing us how the lines hang down near the lower margin of the Truss on both sides, and further shows us that our N2O4 lines are run one above the other, and this orientation of those lines is exactly what we see in the photograph, so...

...there can be no further doubt about things. Another mystery solved, another case closed.

And we'll link to the labeled enlargement of our photograph again, and that way, after having waded through all the above complexity, you'll have a much better chance for full understanding of what you're seeing, and why it gets labeled the way it does.

Ok, what else?

How 'bout an MLP Rainwater Downspout (about which, more, later) with an MLP Mount Mechanism (more, much more, about this, later, too) right next to it? It's important to learn who all the players are, both high-profile and mundane, and wherever I cross paths with one we have yet to be properly introduced to, where it's reasonably-well displayed, I'll stop and point it out, so as you can continue to grow your familiarity with Pad B. But only so much, and no more. Too much is too much, all at once, and we have a lot more photographs to work through, where we can continue to get introduced to more and more of what makes up our Launch Pad, later on, at a nice easy pace.

That said, you're invited to use the email link down at the very bottom of this page and ask me questions about things if you'd like. I'll do the best I can for you, ok?

And we can't forget that float, can we?

That float makes the Stairs of Doom look completely harmless and comforting by comparison, doesn't it?

Floats were radical, and we'll be getting into that aspect of things in more detail later on, but for now, it should be enough for you to imagine yourself sitting on this thing, which is a four-foot square piece of plain-vanilla plywood that's been reinforced with a few 2x2's along its perimeter, and hung by nothing more than common ropes, out over complete empty space, high above certain death, doing your daily job. Ironworkers did just exactly that, all day long, every day, without batting an eye at it. Ho hum.

And I'll wrap this one up by drawing your attention to that pair of very-anonymous-looking electrical panels down on the Pad Deck, right in front of the FSS Elevator doors, over by the base of the Hinge Column.

There's a fairly dramatic story that goes with those electrical panels. And the story comes complete with pictures.

And you shall have your story, and you shall have your pictures.

But not now.

Not today.

We're done for the day, today.

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