Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos

Page 40

The Whole Thing (Original Scan)


FSS and RSS panorama as viewed from one of the MLP access stairtowers on the east side of the Flame Trench.

Note the difference in the gray paint on the FSS. That darker gray, down near the bottom, is because there's no topcoat of paint in this area. Blast from the SRB's and SSME's impinges on the structure here, and they realized there was no hope in keeping a finish-coated paint system on the steel in this area. Just let it get blown away and repaint to suit after the launch.

And please do not get me started on the idiocy and psychosis of some of the "corrosion control" codswallop that we had to swallow at the behest of certain people who, to judge from their behaviors, had never, and never intended to, go outdoors where there are things like weather lurking about, and where people actually get their hands dirty touching things.



The whole thing.

I'm not even sure where to go with this one, so maybe instead, I'll just sort of drift around inside the image, starting from low and going high, working left to right as I do so, bouncing around a little bit randomly here and there, maybe doing the RSS part first, and then jumping back down to the ground and doing the Hinge Column area after that, and then jumping back down to the ground one last time to do the FSS area.

Sure, why not.

I'm zoomed in to 300 percent, on the full-size image you get when you click on the image you see on the page above these words, so maybe go ahead and do that, and get that image open in another window, and you'll be able to see what's going on.

It's gonna be blurry, but not so blurry as to keep me from identifying things that catch my eye. So if you're just looking at what's visible on this page without opening that thing up in a separate window and zooming it to 300 percent, and I'm talking about something you cannot even see, well then... there's your reason.

And at the extreme bottom-left corner of the frame, you see a snippet of removable handrail that lined the west edge of the Flame Trench.

Loose something-or-other beneath a dingy-yellow tarp, on the pad deck past the handrail.

MLP Mount Pedestal No. 6 with somebody's white pickup trucks behind it.

Pad deck.

Couple of pieces of stray 4x4 cribbing.

Gin-pole truck. Pretty sure it's Sauer's, but I don't see their orange ball logo on it, but it's pretty much the right look, the right color, the right thing, so yeah, probably.

Barrels. Not sure if filled with anything, or just placed there as a support for somebody who was working on something.

The bottom end of Column Line 7. Far left is the forward Truck Drive, and going right from there, till you get above the gin-pole truck cab, the bottom landing of the Column Line 7 emergency egress stair tower, coming down from the last piece of RSS Main Framing horizontal pipe.

Heading up from there, the stair tower goes on up until it disappears behind the main body of the RSS, passing along in front of the rough-country swampland in the distance behind it.

Heavy RSS Main Framing pipes of Column Line 7, and a little bit of the pad perimeter road in there, too, just beyond some of the contractor work trailers.

RSS 112' elevation level, with some yellow, slanted, handrail pipe peeking out, attached to a pair of small platforms that are just above the main floor steel. These platforms. Just above which, both near-side and far-side, blocking just a hair of the top yellow handrail pipe on the near side, can be seen the ARCS Stingers, which were an additional little bit of OMS Pod Heated Purge Cover encrustment, bolted on to the bottoms of the Covers, intended to give a little extra protection to the Aft Reaction Control System motors that protrude behind the main body of the orbiter's OMS Pods.

Hypergol Spill Ducts.

Hinged Stairs of Doom to nowhere.

OTV Cameras and camera mounts.

PBK & Contingency Platforms, complete with extensible monorail beams carrying asshole sideways-mounted wire-rope drum hoists sitting uselessly in their (only place they could go, mounted sideways like that), outboard positions as paper no doubt languished on somebody's desk, as that somebody, and their higher-ups, futilely continued to scramble around in an attempt to pin their own criminal incompetence on us.

Lower extremity of the ET Access Platforms Guide Columns.

OWP Hinged Wing Covers.

Right Orbiter Side Seal Panel.

PCR Insulated Metal Paneling held up by rows of horizontal girts.

Black-looking OMBUU and its Access Catwalk, beneath which it can be seen carrying a run of cable/piping tray.

Fearsomely-complex stub cluster of the RSS Main Framing pipes at Elevation 171', Column Line B-2.

Ducting, piping, cabling, lighting, caged ladders, tray runs, handrail, platform framing, columns, posts, beams, girts, diagonals, knee-braces, hanger brackets, floats, etc.

ET Access Platforms.

OAA White Room.

RCS Room.

SRB Access Platforms.

ET Access Platform wire-rope head-sheave supports.

And back down, down to the ground, to one of Sauer's red and white pickup trucks parked on the pad deck with the Hinge Column directly behind it.

And some heavily-braced J-box mounting plates.

And on the left side of the Hinge Column, an MLP water drain (but not SSW water) standpipe.

And beyond that, left a little, the back side of Column Line 7, and the rear drive truck which uncomplainingly carried the whole enormous load. On wheels. On steel rails.

And in the distance, beyond the open expanse of the pad deck covered with a motley collection of who-knows-what, the contractor field trailers with the cars of those who worked in them parked out front, and all of it partially-obscured by the Hinge Column, and the heavy struts which tied it, and therefor the whole RSS, back to the FSS, rigid, unyielding, implacable.

And the stairs, and the circular crossover platform that took you from the FSS to the RSS at the 112' level.

And a welter of pipes and ducts and red Firex lines and more crossover platforms, but these crossovers are for pipes and ducts and Firex lines and not for people, and have no handrails.

And the Centaur Porch.

And an insane labyrinth of cable trays and crossovers and handrails and platforms and huge structural pipes and gusset plates and lighting and more trays and more handrail and more gussets and more diagonals and.....

And the bottom of the strongback which supported the OAA Latchback and its Access Platform.

And the main truss of the Orbiter Access Arm itself, carrying its long white clean-air supply duct.

And the matched pair of FSS/RSS access platforms at Elevation 220', made that way because the RSS might sometimes be here, and might other times be there, altered in orientation by one hundred twenty full degrees of arc travel, spiny with their own lighting, and handrail and OTV camera.

And back down to the ground yet again, one last time, at the foot of the FSS with it's square corner box-columns stoically bearing their loads.

And a bright-red Firex supply pipe snaking up from below to its place on the access platform it shared with SSW supply and drain, all of which would be hooked to the underside of the MLP, but the MLP isn't here today, which is why we can see what we're seeing.

And behind it the bare concrete of the FSS elevators enclosure, left of which, a gentleman in a white hard hat and a light blue shirt appears to be considering something held in his hands, in front of his chest.

And flip-up platforms for access to the lowest level of the MLP.

And the elevator enclosure has gone from concrete down at the ground where the backblast from a departing rocketship might be expected to be worst, as it not only comes at you straightaway, but also gets bounced back up at you from the surface of the pad deck, to corrugated metal paneling higher up where the blast is reduced, just a bit.

And stairs, to the right of the elevator enclosure, stairs which zigzag through every level, all the way to the top of the FSS, all the way up to the Hammerhead Crane.

And red Firex lines and a scrubber, a thing meant to knock down the terrible poisonous corrosives they fuel certain components of rocketships with, down to a level that is at least dealable with, down to a level where you can permit people to enter these sorts of areas with a reasonable expectation of being able to depart these selfsame areas later on, whole, safe, with their own personal health and well-being intact.

And an elevator enclosure that has altered again, this time to solid deckplate, because we're moving upward, moving toward the area above the MLP, which blocks some of the blast in the intermediate area farther down, some of that unimaginably fierce hurricane of fire which comes tearing out of the bottom of our rocketship, seeking to lay waste to all it comes in contact with.

And heavy iron. Vertical. Horizontal. Diagonal. Tied with gussets and beefed-up with stiffener plates.

And an elevator enclosure which morphs, finally, to its finished form from here on up, into alternating corrugated metal paneling (which keeps fingers, tools, and things which bounce inward after falling from above, from entering the open spaces of the elevator shafts), with open chain-link above, at each and every succeeding level of the FSS, where the blast has thinned down to the point where it can be allowed to simply pass through and go on about its business in this area, more or less unimpeded.

And a sweep of stacked cable trays, and a small catwalk to give personnel access to them as they head on over toward the RSS, toward the place where that which needs the power and information which is transmitted through the cables they carry, dwells hidden from view.

And on the far right, coming more and more into view as we proceed higher and higher up the tower, vertical piping and ducting, to give and to take, to fill and to drain, to service, liquids and gases, some of them colder than human imagination can conceive of, some of them containing sufficient explosive energy to spray hot fragments of torn metal, by the ton, far across the surrounding landscape, should they ever get loose of their masters and escape into the wider world around them.

And OTV, and Firex, and handrail, and lighting, and brackets and braces, and...

And the bottom of the strongbacks which hold the hinges which attach the OAA to the tower.

And the Access Platforms and the Caged Ladders and the Hinges themselves.

And the bottom of the great cantilevered structure of the IAA, hanging out into open air.

And the OAA strongback, rising higher and higher along the face of the FSS, carrying, well above the truss of the OAA itself, the bracket which holds the wire rope which gives the OAA further support, carrying its load, arrow-straight in tension.

And the fiercely-complex main structure of the IAA itself, with its "Elephant's Trunk" hanging down along its left side, supported at its top by a hinge mechanism which is protected by the long white obtuse triangle of the Blast Hood, up at the very top of the IAA, and to its right, folded back in silhouette against the blue sky, the Swing Arm which gives access to the Elephant's Trunk when it's attached to the Space Shuttle's External Tank, supported by its hinge-pipe just beneath and to the right of a bit of yellow warning signage and expanded-metal screen on a handrail panel.

And the GOX arm, folded neatly back against the body of the FSS, with it's white flying-saucer Vent Hood at its far left extremity, and its pair of white ducts to vent things away from the ET, and the strongbacks and latchback and hinges and and access platforms that go with it all.

And pointing off to the right at an angle, a small platform for yet more cameras, more OTV.

And at the top, the back end of the Hammerhead Crane hangs over the side of the FSS.

And above that, the white cylinder of the Lightning Mast, eighty vertical feet in extent all by itself, and, look close, the Lightning Wire, extending to either side from the top of the Mast.

And just for fun, imagine yourself standing on top of that Mast.

No handrail. Nothing at all to grasp. Nothing at all to steady yourself with.

Peering down, feeling the Mast sway gently beneath your feet, while your hair gets ruffled by the gentle breeze. Surveying the prospect laid out, mile after endless mile, all before you and beneath you.

Indeed.