The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Tracking the Steel: Page 1 - RSS Various.
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So where is it?
Let's zoom in a little, first...
And the first one looks like it's part of our Hangers, Framing, and Ladders, elevation 100' to 211' steel, and it's over there next to the Hinge Column, and it's listed as being at elevation 131'-8" which puts it just below the RSS 135-level framing, and elevation 135'-7" is the main floor of the whole RSS, and we can start looking for stuff on Drawing S-33 (most of which has been ruined for the purposes of what we're doing right now, because of the extensive modifications to the Anteroom, but we're over by the Hinge Column, so we'll be ok this time) which is the one that shows that level.
And when we get there, we see that the drawing makes mention of our 131'-8" steel, but it refers us elsewhere, to Drawing S-81.
And when we get to S-81, Bingo!, there it is, and it's in perfect agreement with my field sketch, and we can very comfortably rest assured that we've found the right steel, based on location, number of beams, depth of beams, and length of beams.
So ok. So we found that steel, and we found it up in the air, connected, and we got a positive i.d. for it, rock-solid correlation between contract drawings and physical iron up in the air, no ambiguity about any of it. Pretty cool. I do not recall exactly why Dick Walls needed to verify that particular bit of steel was erected, but very obviously, he did. My gut feeling on it is that it had to do with payments for work done, and possibly closing out a category to receive final payment on that category, but I do not actually know. They may have been unable to find it on the ground, and at the breakneck pace Wilhoit worked at, somebody might have been looking for it, who knows why, NASA, Briscoe the prime contractor, somebody else, I do not know, and it wasn't on the ground, so is it up on the tower already? Sheffield needed verification, and they sent MacLaren up on the tower to verify, before Sheffield could shoot a piece of paper at somebody saying, "It's already up there, go find it yourself if you don't believe us," and that was that.
So what's next?...
Ok, it's looking like we're up around 171'-2" which is the elevation of the intermediate-level Primary Framing, and we're back on Column Line A, somewhere between Lines 3 and 2, closer to 3, and based on the name of the piece "360F4" and the notation that it's a plain 3x3x¼ angle, no length given, no further particulars given, and the fact that it appears as if it ties a vertical piece to one of the big pipe diagonals a little off-center, perhaps it was cut a little long, plain-vanilla, to be used as a "field work" piece, with the intention of letting the ironworkers finish trim to suit existing conditions, up in the air, and then connect it by welding it to the existing steel, and getting it to fit precisely in that manner instead of attempting to get the exact length and shape of the curve that butts up to the big pipe ahead of time, risking the chance that it might be a little wrong, and wind up costing quite a lot more because it wouldn't go, as-fabricated, and would have to be redone. So. Let's go see what's what, with this one.
First off, it looks like it's another part of our Hangers, Framing, and Ladders steel, so let's go find a drawing of that, and see if we can narrow it down.
So we go to Drawing S-37, which shows the RSS at elevation 175'-0", which also includes the Primary Framing at 171'-2" (they almost always show things a little below any given elevation on a plan view, with notes to let you know the elevation of the thing in question) instead of showing things above, and you just kind of get used to that, and learn to maneuver around through the drawings accordingly, but don't go betting the whole farm on it, 'cause every once in a while they'll change things up on you a little bit, and you don't want to go losing the whole farm, right?
Ok, there's an elevation-view section cut on S-37 in the area we're interested in, telling us to go look at S-83, and in the exact place we're interested in, there's a 4'-0" dimension given, matching what's on our sketch exactly, so we're definitely closing in on things with this one, and oh by the way, we were wrong about Hangers, Framing, and Ladders, and we've lurched off into Cable Tray Country with this one, so it just goes to show, you can think you know what you're looking right at...
...but sometimes you don't.
Go to S-83, and we're pretty much there, and it's even got a note that says "L3x3x¼ LENGTH TO BE ESTAB. TO SUIT TRAY WELD TO PIPE DIAG." and that's really starting to narrow it down, but there are section cuts taking us to S-84 that we're going to need to look at, to make absolutely sure we've got the right item.
And sure enough, there it is, right there, verified. And another question mark is turned into a check mark and things march steadily onward.
Nice, huh?
Ok, what's next?
More of the same, it would appear...
And this one seems to be right on Line 3, so maybe it won't be so hard to track down?
Pshit.
It's hard to track down.
Where the hell is it, anyway?
We're right off of the corner of Column Lines A and 3, aiming out toward the Line-2 side of 3, and we're at an elevation of 171'-2" again, so why am I having so much trouble with this damn thing?
Ok, I've got a dimension of 18'-6" plus or minus, given for a sort of half frame, with four horizontal members, and one diagonal member up on top, and horizontal member number three from the top, which is the one I'm looking for, is hitting a gigantic structural pipe which is part of the Primary Framing, so... where?
Randomly poking around the scene of the previous crime on S-83 and S-84, which neighborhood we are still very definitely in, finally gives me my "bingo" moment, using the shape and height of the "half frame" assembly.
And here it is, here, more or less flush up against the side of the Payload Changeout Room.
Gah. That was much harder than I thought it was going to be. And yes, it was exactly this kind of stuff that left me with a lifelong dislike for cable tray supports, too.
Ok, now what?
And this one gets a little tricky, twice in fact, and serves as a good illustration as to the lengths to which brevity and conciseness will be taken, in an environment where there's obviously already waaay too much going on, and anywhere you can cut down on things, you cut down on things...
387B1 is about as plain-vanilla as it gets, when it comes to structural steel. There's five of 'em, and they span three different catwalks, two of which more or less make sense, because they're mirror images of each other, but the third and final catwalk is way the hell and gone out in the middle of nowhere, in the OMBUU Arm Access Catwalk steel at elevation 163'-8", which is a pretty good ways off from everybody else hanging around together, way up there on either side of the RCS Room.
So, before we go any farther, what's going on with that?
And what's going on with that, is that catwalks is catwalks, and they're all pretty much the same standard four-foot width, and any time you have a member that spans that standard four foot width, having zero other particulars or peculiarities of the catwalk to deal with otherwise, then it's going to be cookie-cutter time, and if they have the exact same particulars, then the people down on the shop floor will set things up, and fabricate them, exactly the same, all the way down to the same piecemark, which in this case is from Detail Drawing number 387, and it's beam number 1 on that drawing, and the piecemark of 387B1 gets put on all of them, and then you put that same piecemark on the erection drawings wherever these things go... and yes, as it turns out, sorting this kind of crap out on an erection drawing was the very first sign that James MacLaren was in any way different from all the other children, because without even being asked to do so, he'd sit down at one of the big erection drawings, just for fun, solving a real puzzle instead of one of those pointless "pat you on the head and call you a good boy when you finally figure it out" puzzles (which I never liked) they gave you when you were a kid, and he'd start finding stuff, and asking Dick Walls, "Why?" and every so often the answer to the "Why?" was, "Because we've made an error, and you just caught what might have been an expensive error had it not been picked up this soon, but these errors you're catching are not beneficial to the company and will cost money to correct either way, and could you perhaps try a little harder to quit acting so damn pleased with yourself about it every time this happens, hmm?"
"And if you're so damn smart, and think you're such a hotshot because you found this stuff down here, how about you go up on the tower and try it up there some too, hmm?"
And I did.
And that, right there, is how the whole thing started happening. Baby's first steps. And now I'm not a baby anymore, now I'm a toddler!
I shall never be able to repay you the grace, Richard Walls.
Never.
So I must find some way to pay it forward, instead.
Ok. Back to our latest thrilling installment of In Search of Steel!
387B1. Up near the RCS Room somewhere.
We start with the main drawing for that area, S-40, which is showing us the steel at elevation 211'-2" which is the whole RSS Roof.
And sure enough, there's note telling us to go to S-42 to find more catwalk, extending out past Line C, toward Line D.
Bingo! That was easy, and just for laughs, let's go back to the photograph from Page 9 and have a look at a couple of our 387B1's up in the air, in the real world, all nice and connected to all of their surrounding steel framing, ready to carry the steel-bar grating that constitutes the actual floor for these catwalks, with everybody's boots tramping back and forth across it, doing their stoic jobs of keeping people alive, keeping people from falling to their deaths, mute and unspeakingly.
Or at least for four out of five, it's "bingo," and it's "easy," and now we have to go and find number five, all alone by itself down there somewhere in the catwalk that takes us to the OMBUU (well... once they get around to finally hanging the OMBUU on the tower, anyway).
We'll be looking for it at elevation 163'-8" which is a place we've already been before, so it should be familiar enough, I would suppose.
Drawing S-36. And there it is, right there, and it's pretty inconspicuous, so I went ahead and labeled it for you. Nothing to it, eh?
And if you're wondering about the notation on the sketch about "3 of 5" for our 387B1's, and the fact that I've clearly gone up on the tower and verified all five of them as having been erected by Wilhoit (look close at the sketch, and note the red colored-pencil on all five of them, telling us that every single one of them has been verified), the answer is that our original question as to the status of only three of the total five makes no mention of which three it is, that we're interested in. There were questions coming from the shop regarding the fabrication and delivery status of these three beams (maybe somebody wrote the wrong number somewhere on a bill of material or a shipping list, maybe somebody was worried that three of the five might have been misfabricated in some way, maybe... almost any damn thing at all) and we did not know exactly which ones, so since you're up there crawling around on the iron MacLaren, how 'bout you just go ahead and keep right on crawling until you've seen for yourself that all five of them are up there, and that way there can be no lingering questions about which ones, and yes, that's the way it's done. And of course the notation "1 of 1" is equally useful insofar as it tells MacLaren that there's only one of them, in total, and once he's found it and verified it's in place, he's done scrambling around risking his untethered ass on high steel looking for any more of the damn things, and can then move on to looking for other things.
Which returns us to our second bit of trickiness, and our second illustration of brevity, on how cutting down on things actually works, and for this one we're in search of something called 402B4, and the brevity consists in using the same little patch of paper on my field sketch because this beam lives right next door to the previous beam, and why in the world would I want to draw the damn thing twice, when I could just go ahead and make a note about this, additional, beam, on the same stuff I was using for those other beams?
And of course efficiency is not only its own reward, but it also tends to reward nicely elsewhere too, and it's not for me to get too worked up over asking "Where?" or saying something really stupid like, "Prove it," or "Show me," or any of the other stuff that fools insist upon demanding, and instead, you just make a habit of it and let efficiency take care of the rest of it, on its own, unquestioned.
So ok. So here's our good friend 402B4, right here. Complete with a nice label, at no additional charge to you, the customer.
Tra la la.
And our next item is a little something called 401A5, and it lives inside the Anteroom, and it lives inside the OLD Anteroom, and for the old Anteroom, we have neither drawing nor photograph that includes this little piece of steel, but, just going by my field sketch, who would need anything like that anyway? Walk inside the Anteroom through the door, look to your right, over there in the corner... see any pieces of plain 2½x2½x¼ that are 3'-6½" long? How many can there be in there? See it? Good. That's the one.
Next item, please.
"Oddball Stair 212 to 198 Veh Acc Second Tread From Bottom Has No Nosing."
Ok, what's this?
And what this is, is a marvelous snapshot in time, taking us back to a day when James MacLaren was still so new at this stuff, that he had no idea what the stair which takes you down to the Antenna Access Platform was called (and he didn't know what the Antenna Access Platform itself was called, either), but he did know that this particular stair was quite different from all the other stairs, in that it was not square with the rest of the structure, but instead headed off at an angle, and it also headed down and away from a place, taking you to another place, neither of which places, at first glance, seemed to make all that much "sense" and for both of those reasons, this stair was an "Oddball."
And Richard Walls was happy to indulge James MacLaren in his state of temporary ignorance, and as long as MacLaren could get up on to the high steel, and then get back down again without taking the express route straight to the ground all-at-once in a single life-ending drop, and then communicate the information that RW needed to do his own job, then all very well and good, call the damn thing whatever the hell you want to, just get up there and find out if we need to furnish an extra stair-tread nosing so as one of Wilhoit's guys can go up there and screw it on to the stair and put this little discrepancy to bed in so doing.
This stair was an "oddball" in one other way too, and that would be that it was never rendered on any of the drawings in an easy way to deal with it.
The architectural drawings showed it, but only the the top part of it, with the bottom of it disappearing out of view beneath the adjoining structure over by the RCS Room.
The structural drawings also showed it, but it was the same thing there, too. You could have the top end, or you could have the bottom end, and if you wanted both ends, well then, here it is, but that's not very satisfying, either, and it's almost as if they're going out of their way to not show you the strange angle this stair is taking down to the Antenna Access Platform, isn't it? But at least they gave you a note about the nosings, which is nice, since that's what I was looking for that day, and I now know enough to be looking for not just any old stair-tread nosing, but instead, I want my nosings to be abrasive. Well ok. Thanks for that.
The mechanical drawings also had it, and they showed the whole thing, in context, but even this is less than fully-desirable, since you're kind of looking at it from an angle that keeps you from really getting a feel for this stair.
Something's telling me that the designers and the draftspeople didn't like this stair, and they didn't like having to deal with it on their drawings, and it just sort of wound up... out there, unloved, unwanted, uncared-for by anybody.
Who knows?
So yeah, it was an oddball.
But it was really fun to walk up and down on. The view was spectacular and it gave you a strong sense of being up in the air, hanging out over empty space, hovering over a frighteningly-lethal free drop, far above all those ant-like people way down there on the Pad Deck below you.
Which of course you were, so be careful up there, ok?
And as for 396HR 14 and 15, who's to say? Couple of handrails. No further information given. Clearly, at the time, I didn't need any further information, or perhaps they weren't even part of what's written above them, and the time has passed and the world has turned and we shall never know ever again about any of it, except that some where, there once were, a couple of handrails which got fabricated on the Sheffield Steel shop floor, per the particulars on a certain Detail Drawing number 396, and beyond that...
...nothing.
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