The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Page 40: In the Distance.
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And you turn your head to the right a little bit, and the jib on Wilhoit's big red Manitowoc comes into view, and another day's work on the towers is about to begin.
In the distance, at Pad A, Columbia sits on top of the MLP which is spanning the Flame Trench, in its launch position, directly above the Flame Deflector.
Look close, and you can tell that its External Tank is white, and only two missions flew in this configuration before they determined that they could dispense with the coat of white paint on the ET, leaving it bare and showing the natural brownish-orange color of the foam insulation it is covered in, and saving themselves 600 pounds of weight on the uphill climb into orbit, thus gaining a substantial increase in payload weight which could be lofted to orbit.
Additional close scrutiny of this image shows us, left to right, in the distance, the dark round smudge of the Liquid Hydrogen Tank at Pad A, and to the right of that, sticking up above the horizon just a little, the Sound Suppression Water Tower.
Farther right, still at Pad A, the darkness of the opening in the fifty-foot-tall concrete hill of the pad itself locates the north end of the Flame Trench.
To its right, low, the lighter triangle of Access Road 'E', its long ramping extent viewed nearly end-on, sits directly beneath Columbia.
Back left, just a bit, and higher, just a very little bit, above the right end of the darkness of the Flame Trench opening in the pad, the east end of the North Piping Bridge with the LH2 Tower, East Stair Tower, and High Pressure Gas Tower blending into it to the right, then further blend into the darkness of the Mobile Launch Platform, the dark long rectangle of which continues further right until it too blends into the Fixed Service Structure, with just a little bit of light showing beneath it on either side of the dark snarl of the 9099 Building (about which much more, soon) which sits exactly beneath Columbia in our view today.
Sitting on the MLP, the underside of Columbia's left wing, covered in black Thermal Protection System tiles, can be seen just above the top of the MLP, peeking out from behind the ET and Solid Rocket Booster on that side. Up from there, the slightest bulge of the Orbiter's body can be seen to the right of the white-painted External Tank and SRB, which is met from the right, near but not all the way, to its top, by the dark extension of the Intertank Access Arm, coming out and to the left, a little bit above half-way to the top of the FSS, near-level with the distant horizon line behind it.
On top of the FSS, barely visible, the thin up-pointing darkness of the Lightning Mast extends highest of all.
To the right of the FSS, the body of the Rotating Service Structure, swung back away from Columbia into its demate position, gives away some of its own detail, but before we examine any of that, a very close look will reveal the slightly lighter darkness of the more distant Mobile Service Tower at Titan III Launch Complex 41, peeking up above the RSS Main Framing Steel at elevation 203' (Pad A, remember, five foot difference in pad elevations, remember?), between the darker shadings of the FSS which is touching it on its left side, and the upper structures of the RCS Room and Hoist Equipment room jutting above the top of the RSS to its right, in a set of uncannily coincidental alignments of all three objects.
Pad 41 is where the Voyager Planetary Mission deep-space probes both launched from, both of which are at this time outside our Solar System never to return, on an endless journey across the breadth of the Milky Way Galaxy. Both Vikings, which were the first successful missions to land on Mars, also flew from Pad 41, which makes it a very historical, and even otherworldly, place.
Returning our attention to the RSS, from top down, we've already discussed the RCS and Hoist Equipment Rooms, and below that the dark blocky outline of the Payload Changeout Room can be seen. Beneath that, more darkness, which defines the APU and APS Platforming steel beneath the PCR, below which is open water seen in the farther distance, light-colored, beneath the clear span of the RSS. And to the right of that, even with the body of the PCR, Column Line 7 is visible, darker down low with the additional substance of Stair Tower 3, and up high, barely, every so faint and barely, the diagonal Main Framing which slopes up and to the left, connecting back to the top of the RSS.
As far to the right of the Towers and Shuttle, as the SSW Water Tower is to the left, the dark sphere of the Lox Dewar sits, sensibly closer to us than the main body of the Pad itself.
To the right of that, distant, above the horizon, Titan III Pad 40 stands alone. To the right of that, also above the horizon, right of the crane jib, another dark rectangular smudge defines the SMAB (Solid Motor Assembly Building) near the far right margin of the frame, which is also part of the greater Titan III ITL (Integrate, Transfer, Launch) facility, along with Pads 41 and 40, as well as the VIB (Vertical Integration Building) which is out of frame, unseeable, farther right.
None of it is easy to see, and the quality of this old photographic print, taken with an old camera having no long lens of any kind, is woefully inadequate... and yet it is all there, all visible, and all testifying to the vastness of the Cape.
The Cape is a huge place, and things are scattered far and wide, separated by miles, and it's all done as a safety precaution because of the insane level of explosive danger that exists in each and every facility, to keep things from being taken out, from becoming part of the collateral damage, should things go wrong in any given individual one of them.
In the clear light of a Florida Dawn, seen from on high, with your own eyes, all of it was tack-sharp, easily visible, easily identifiable.
And the shadow of a small puffball of fair-weather cumulus would darken the landscape just a bit, between you and the distant objects you were considering, and it too served to give scale to things, to tell you just how vast the prospect laid out before you really was, and you would continue to consider, and you might get a brief shiver of transient understanding, and you might not, and either way... it was good to be there.
Here it all is, labeled, in broad overview.
And now, we'll do just the Pad A portion of things, at pretty high zoom.
First, just the cropped-in image itself.
Second, the same cropped-in image, with things in coarse outline.
And finally, the same cropped-in image, with things in coarse outline, with labels for each discrete element.
Open all three in separate tabs or windows. Blink back and forth between them.
See if you can find anything I haven't specifically talked about.
Have a little fun with it.
Why not?
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