The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Page 43: RSS/FSS Panorama, a Magic Spell Unbroken.
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And after getting the shot which we saw on the previous page with the Hurricane Tie-downs visible, I stepped forward, just a bit, in order to cause the combined extent of the RSS and FSS to slightly overflow the frame with my camera rolled to display things in landscape orientation, and then walked it up the towers using three frames to do so, bottom to top, to create this panorama which extends nearly 90 full degrees, horizon to zenith.
The light was good, and the subject matter was oriented perfectly from where I was standing, and I so very much wanted to be able to convey the jaw-droppingly cyclopean scale of things, but I knew in my heart, even as I was hitting the shutter release, that I was going to fail miserably in that task.
The image above links to a very large .jpg rendered at 6,450x10,935 pixels which weighs 63 megabytes (the .tiff it came from renders at the same scale but weighs 432 megabytes), and we're never going to be able to get the feel for things as they really were that morning, but we're trying. We're trying the best we can.
Nobody has a monitor setup that spans 90 degrees of vertical extent, literally from horizontal eye level to straight directly overhead, but if you can find something, anything, that will allow you to get at least somewhere, or something, with that kind of visual scope, I would recommend doing so, and just kind of sitting back and letting your eyes wander around the stunning complexity, slowly, languidly, unhurriedly, first here, and then there, and then somewhere else, and and then try to imagine yourself standing in the cold wind on the Pad Deck as I was when I took this triplet of photographs, with a brilliant Florida Sun warming your back, and this thing there before you, looming, overpoweringly, disbelievingly, impossibly, sky-blockingly dominating your field of view.
Having an eye for the aesthetic is a blessing, but it's also a curse.
Because you always find yourself failing.
Failing to convey.
Failing to convey the sensations.
And the sensations are the thing.
The reason.
And you feel horrible knowing that it's never going to convey itself to anyone else in all the world.
And yet you persist in trying, anyway.
And you never stop trying for a full lifetime.
I'm still at it.
And I'm still failing.
To express the inexpressible.
Bring the linked image up, full-size.
Cast your gaze over to the left.
Over to the Great Rotating Service Structure of Launch Complex 39-B.
Look for the threadwork. Look for the double strands of horizontal handrail pipe.
It's everywhere.
And now look for the platforming and catwalks which can be found just beneath it, everywhere.
And then, with your jacket collar pulled up against the biting north wind blowing against the back of your neck, trying to blow your hardhat off, place your boot heels down on the grating of those platforms and catwalks.
Rest your hand against the rock-solid smooth chill of the top handrail pipe.
Get comfortable.
And now look.
To your side.
Both ways.
To the ground, far beneath you, populated with ant-like people going about their tasks... creating.
Listen to the wind as it cuts through the open steel structure all around you.
Smell the clarity of winter in the air as you do so.
Feel it!
And you are dwarfed.
Dwarfed by a thing beyond imagining, which yet you are a part of, and which will, one day, perform a task completely beyond imagination.
And out away from the concrete far beneath you, a wilderness extends mile after endless empty mile after mile.
Under a sky so sharp it can cut you.
And you turn your attention away from it, take your hand off the cold steel, and listen to the sounds of your boots on the steel-bar grating as you step out across the calling void of open space, with nothing at all clearly visible directly beneath you through the open bars of the panels you are traversing, your senses correspondingly heightened, and the air filling your lungs deliciously with each breath, and you cross the catwalk, and you go back to the FSS and take the elevator... up... or down... and you get out and you cross more grating in the cold wind... and perhaps a stair... perhaps even a ladder... and a new aerie above the void is reached... and a whole new set of sensations comes flooding...
And I shall never be able to express it.
Any of it.
Try though I might, again and again and again.
And down on the ground, Elmo McBee is laughing at you.
And you have to laugh right along with him.
The absurdity of it all is just too much.
And he pushes his hardhat down over his eyes at a ridiculous angle, and saunters into your frame down at the far bottom right.
And the two of you laugh together.
What else can anybody do, anyway?
It's too much.
And Elmo knows.
But he has the good sense to keep his mouth shut about it.
But you can see it in his eyes.
And in the crinkles on his weatherbeaten face around them.
A hard man, difficult to know, possessed of not the slightest shred of any inclination toward putting up with bullshit from anyone or anything for any reason.
A man not to trifle with.
A man not to cross.
With a twinkle in his eye, giving you a sidelong look and a wry smile curling near-invisibly out at the very farthest corners of his mouth.
And Elmo knows that you know too.
And words?
No.
No words.
Not a breath of it.
It would only get in the way.
And break the spell.
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