The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Page 44: Out On The End of the Hammerhead Crane.
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This photograph is a bit out of sequence, and properly belongs with the image on Page 37 since it was taken at the same time (and you can verify that by looking for the ironworker in the spider basket, working the inflatable seals on the Right Orbiter Side Seal Panel), but I'm guessing that you'll have a better appreciation of things on this page after you had a chance to see the image on the previous page, and know exactly where I was, when I took the photo at the top of this page, hanging precariously off the far end of the Hammerhead Crane.
No harness, no safety gear, no nothing. This was back in the early 1980's remember, and back then everybody was just fine and dandy with you going wherever you wanted to go (as long as you weren't getting in their way), and if you personally felt like you could get out there and back without taking a fall, and were willing to go, well then, don't let us stop you and by all means have at it and enjoy yourself while you're there.
As was done with the lead photograph on the previous page, this one links to a large .jpg file and it renders at 8,582 pixels by 8,065 pixels, and will bear a good close looking-at, when viewed at full size.
Look closely at the right-hand top corner of this panorama, and you can just barely see the tiniest gray sliver of the Hammerhead Crane's steel framing, which I was unable to make go away by hanging out any farther than I already was, because I was verging dangerously close to becoming overbalanced out there, tipping over, and plummeting 300 feet to my death.
So I did the best I could, but I couldn't quite clean things up visually as much as I wanted to.
And even though the Hammerhead Crane does not even show properly in this image, this is still a good time to talk about it, because you're out there on it, and what better time to talk about it than when you're out there?
We've already been up on top of the FSS for a visit to the Hammerhead Crane on Page 35, and we learned a thing or two about it then, but we did not leave the envelope of the checkerplate on top of the FSS, so perhaps now we'll take a little walk out there to the end of it to get the picture at the top of this page, and see how that aspect of things works.
The drawing tells us that it's 95'-1" from the centerline of the FSS to the centerline of the Main Hoist Equalizer Sheave, and that sheave is centered on the inboard side of the catwalk grating that runs side-to-side out on the tip of the Crane Boom. The FSS is 40 feet square, so since the measurement starts from the FSS centerline, we knock 20 feet off of the dimension given. And then, since we're a little past the centerline of the Equalizer Sheave, we'll put a couple of feet back on, and arrive at something like 77 or maybe even 78 feet cantilevered out over a sheer drop of 300 vertical feet to the bottom of the Flame Trench (77 or 78 feet of distance past the far edge of the FSS will put you squarely over the five-story-deep Flame Trench, which is why you get to add that distance to the 250 vertical feet from the top of the FSS to the Pad Deck), and...
...you're a long ways up, and you're a long ways out there...
...and you can definitely feel it.
Here's another attempt at letting you see where you are, using one of the vicinity drawings, which I've grafted the Hammerhead Crane onto (correctly scaled), with the catwalk on the far end of the boom labeled.
And you could definitely feel it, simply walking out there.
The crane boom would bounce up and down a little as you proceeded along the catwalk toward its far end.
Not much, but you could definitely feel it, and it had a heavy slow cadence about it, but it was, undeniably, beyond the shadow of any and all doubt... moving... rising and falling... ...beneath your feet.
And to be that far out (and getting farther of course), and that far up, and to have the damn thing yielding to your footsteps as you went...
Yeah, that was a real attention-getter right there.
That crane was massive, and without even thinking about it, you would expect a thing like that to behave pretty much just like everything else up on the towers, and everything else up on the towers was rock solid.
And you'd head down the catwalk and the damn thing would bounce a little with each step...
...and, yeah.
Despite is quite-substantial outward appearances, all of the ironworkers regarded it as a joke. A toy. Having not nearly enough strength, capacity, or reach to do... pretty much anything, really. Wilhoit put it up on top of the FSS, and after that, it was never used by them for anything, despite NASA being agreeable to do so, had anybody actually wanted to. So maybe think about that, next time you look at the Hammerhead Crane. Appearances can be deceiving.
But once the initial surprise and momentary fright of feeling the damn crane boom moving around underneath you as you walked across it subsided, it was business as usual and out you go, merrily bouncing along as you did so, and the view from up there...
...no.
...there's no way I'm ever going to be able to do this.
There's no way I'm ever going to be able to convey the sensations.
I am on a fool's errand, and I am the fool, but dammit, I need to at least try.
People want to know.
I am endlessly asked, "What was it like?"
"What was it like being up there?"
How can I refuse such a request?
People are deeply curious about this wildly-uncanny place.
People want to be able to imagine themselves as being in this wildly-uncanny place.
And who am I to just dismiss them with a curt wave of the hand and a few blocking words along the line of "You can't explain it."
I have to at least try, goddammit.
And you are up there.
And you are out there.
And the photograph up at the top of this page shows it.
Except that it doesn't.
Over on the far left margin of the photograph, in the center, half way from top to bottom, just past the face of the RSS which you are seeing nearly edge-on, you can see the small dark curiously-angled shape of the Drive Cab on the Forward RSS Truck Drive, and below and to the right of that, there are two groups of three people standing on the concrete of the Pad Deck, one group actively working on the Truck Drive, and another group a bit farther away, clearly discussing something about what's going on with the work that required getting up out of the chair, away from the desk and interrupting the engineering work being done there, and then going up on the Pad Deck for a personal eyeballing of things so as the engineering work could be rejoined later on and continued... correctly.
All well and good.
But look how tiny they all are!
Back out on the photograph to allow all of it to fill your screen, and give you its full scope of view, encompassing both RSS and FSS, and take a moment to consider just how tiny those people really are.
The photograph is trying.
It really is.
It's trying to let you see where you really are.
But it doesn't have a prayer.
It can never convey the sensation of being out on the far end of the Hammerhead Crane, out above the Flame Trench, looking back, and looking down, from where you are.
And a part of your mind breaks free, on its own, and becomes completely absorbed by the fact that you are standing directly above that place from which MOON ROCKETS flew.
That place from which the fires of the great Saturn rockets were lit.
And the Flame Trench directly beneath the soles of your boots would be filled with an incomprehensible fury of all-consuming flame and sharply-percussive thunderous crackling sound, and the whole place would be set violently shaking and vibrating, and a completely unbelievable mass, a mass of over 6 million pounds, would simply detach itself, and shudder into the sky, straight up.
None of this can be real.
None of it.
And there you stand, and you look through the well-spaced steel bars of the grating you're standing on, straight directly down into the great gash of the Flame Trench, and you try.
You try to make sense of it.
But you never will.
Why was it you that was chosen for this?
And no answer is heard.
Only the sound of the air around you. And beneath you.
And you tear yourself away from thoughts of such violence by sheer force of will, only to find yourself assaulted elsewhere, all around, by your senses reeling under an onslaught of further impossibility, backed by an all-too-real immediate threat of death, should you somehow fall from where you stand.
And there is no escape from it.
It crowds in on you from all sides, from above and from below, and it draws you to it, and it warns you away from it, and your senses cannot...
And the onslaught refuses to stop, and at some point, you reach an equilibrium where your fight or flight reflexes subside enough to allow your mind to...
...consider.
And a different part of your mind breaks free, and on its own, involuntarily, reckons with the fearsome beauty of it all flooding down and through you, taking you along with itself...
...and you give yourself over to it.
...and you stand there...
...stunned.
Absorbing, but not comprehending.
Not understanding.
And you want to stay there...
...forever.
But there is work to be done, and time is short.
And you know this and yet...
...you linger.
Letting your eyes continue their feast upon all which makes itself known to them.
And blast and damn the work, I'm not leaving.
Not just yet.
Not just now.
Soon enough... but not just now.
And still another part of your mind finds itself completely taken by, and wishes to join with, the ocean, and the endless wilderness, and the Crawlerway, and the VAB in the distance, and the thought of Saturn V's, and equally-distant Pad A, and the thinnest scattering of thread-like roads looking completely out of place and very lonesome against the backdrop of ancient dune lines and the tracts of water and differing vegetation delineating them, and in the far haze the launch towers of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station where things like Viking and Voyager began their impossible flights across, and beyond, the solar system, and a wasp buzzes nearby, and puffy white clouds, and the light, and the shadow, and the colors, and the sun warming and giving life to all beneath it, and...
And there you stand, dumbfounded. Struck mute.
And yet still another part of your mind detaches itself from all of this and considers the RSS and the FSS, and the whole Pad, and begins looking for work in progress, and what they're doing and how it's going to affect you in the coming days, weeks, and months, and what are they looking at over there by the Truck Drive, anyway, and...
And fractal-like, endlessly recursive, it keeps expanding and drawing you in to it and along with it, and you find yourself splitting endlessly...
And you tear yourself away from it all again, and goddammit, it's time to get the hell out of here already, and let's get going already, and there's people down there somewhere who are growing weary of waiting for your worthless ass to get back from wherever it is that you've disappeared to this time, and...
And so you come down.
And you come down.
But you know that you will return.
You know that you will ascend, once again.
Just as soon as you possibly can.
Before it all finally gets snatched away from you for once and for all and forever.
And you do.
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