Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos

Page 44

GOX Arm Lift 3 (Original Scan)


Notice how in the bottom right photo, I had to be standing directly beneath the suspended load to get this shot.

Don't do that, ok?

It didn't happen this day, but every once in a while they lose something during a lift.

You don't want to be under something when they lose it. Even something as trifling as a washer for one of the structural bolts. It's not good for your complexion. Can go right through you, in fact.

And while we're at it here, a couple of notes about this scanned image.

One thing is that, for unknown reasons, the colors on this one aged very poorly, and I'm not happy with my results here when it comes to color correction. I dunno. Sometimes the thing just won't, and there's nothing you can do about it short of taking it all the way back to black and white, and then colorizing, with completely made-up, completely inserted from scratch colors, and no, I'm not going to do that. Gonna work with what I've got, come what may.

And another item is that this series of images is out of the usual left-to-right top-to-bottom chronological order. The top right image is the first in the series, then top-left, and after that the bottom pair are in correct order. I have no recollection of putting this stuff into the album, and cannot tell you why I got it wrong. I just did, that's all. So in the narratives which come below each individual photograph, I'm going to start with the top right image. Just so you know, ok?




Top Right: (Full-size)

And now we're starting to really get somewhere.

The Gox Arm is now gaining some pretty good elevation, and I wanted to keep things in perspective, so you could see the overall sense of things, but the goddamned FSS is so big, that I could no longer just keep stepping back away from it, to keep it all in frame, without going over the side of the pad slope in the High Pressure Gas area and taking a fatal fall, so instead I began walking south from my original position, north of the Flame Deflector, so I could keep the backdrop for where the arm is going, in-frame. That said, the FSS doesn't give a shit, and since it's so goddamned gigantic, it just keeps right on going up and out of the top of the frame anyway.

That FSS is big.

In this frame the light is hitting things just so, and you can clearly see that the ironworkers are controlling the truss with a pair of tag lines, one on each end. And yeah, if it's too windy on any given day, then you don't even bother with trying to do a lift like this, because the wind will get hold of what you're lifting, and move it around with more than enough force to overpower anybody on the ground who might be battling things with a tag line.

Once things like that begin acting up, begin demonstrating that they have a mind of their own, then you can forget about it.

In addition to the obvious concern of the thing swinging around uncontrollably and bashing into something, there also exists the more subtle concern of having people up there on the connection plates attempting, via the use of their fingers, to line bolt-holes up and inserting bolts into the lined-up holes. This is dangerous. This will result in your coming back down off the tower with less fingers than you took up there in the first place if things go poorly. Are you gonna be that guy? Are you gonna put your fingers between the unfeeling tonnage of hard steel surfaces that are moving? Moving on their own? Nah. Nobody's gonna do that. So when the atmosphere starts moving around even just a little bit more than might be deemed advisable, you go and work on other things in other places, and you wait till the conditions improve sufficiently, but even then, even with improved conditions, perhaps now, you, dear reader, have a bit more understanding of the concept of gigantic unyielding things, wanting to move around on their own, driven by lightly-gusting breezes that might not feel particularly hazardous as experienced by someone down on the ground who doesn't understand this sort of thing, even as people attempt to put their one-and-only set of fingers in between them and shove bolts into bolt-holes.

Yeah.

Fucking ironworkers.

In the extreme bottom left corner of the frame, you can see Wade Ivey, watching like a hawk, as ever.

Standing next to Wade, that might be Ray Elkins. Ray was a Good Man.

Zoom in on the image, maybe 200 percent or so, and look close, to the right of Ray and Wade, down at the bottom of the MLP Mount Pedestal, and you can see they've tied a rope to the bottom ladder rung on the pedestal and taken it across to one of the segments of the removable handrail that lines the Flame Trench. They've roped-off the work area. They don't want anybody in there. It's dangerous in there, underneath the lift. And so they've roped it off to keep unsuspecting people out of the area. Lifts are dangerous.


Top Left: (Full-size)

Here we can see the arm is continuing to rise into the sky, and I am by now rounding the south end of the Flame Trench with my camera, still keeping things in frame, now including the Hammerhead Crane.

In the foreground, the red bulk of the Manitowoc can now be seen, but once again, we were not using it for this lift. I do not recall, but it might have been engaged in its own activities on the RSS, toward which its boom is pointing.


Bottom Left: (Full-size)

And here we see the arm at its final elevation, and preliminary work is underway to precisely match up the bolt holes in the Hinge Boxes of the arm with the bolt holes on the FSS strongback which will carry it.

Compare this image with the one above it, and you can see that the Hammerhead Crane has been rotated with its boom more to the north as a part of this effort, and has also pulled its hook in closer to the FSS, too.

On the ground, the boom of the Manitowoc has also been rotated, and is now facing south toward my camera. I have no recollection what they might have been doing with the Manitowoc while we were lifting the Gox Arm, however.

To keep everything in frame, I have stepped even farther south across the pad deck than I was when I took the preceding frame.


Bottom Right: (Full-size)

Now that the arm has reached its full elevation, it's time to depart the pad deck, get into the FSS elevator, and head on up the tower to where the work is being done, attaching the arm to the strongback which supports it.

But of course, me being me, I just had to get beneath the arm and grab a frame looking straight up at the arm suspended beneath the Hammerhead Crane against the blue sky above it all.

Dangerous place to be putting yourself.

And I've already discussed that sort of thing.

And will not belabor things further.

But oh what a view!

In this frame, we can see that the Gox Arm has been rotated back away from the FSS, which it was nearly touching in the previous frame.

Stuff like this happens often enough.

It needs to be right.

And it it's not right, then they'll back away until things are right.

At which point they'll come back in and get on it.

And also, this frame gives us a pretty good look at something else.

Which something I've alluded to already.

And if you give the boom of the Hammerhead Crane a close look, you can see, offset from the centerline of the boom, more toward the top of the frame, a nice smooth gray pipe that runs for nearly the entire length of the boom, and it even sticks out just a weency little bit past the end of the boom.

And when we get to the part of things where I tell the story of that pipe...

...well...

...but not yet. Not now.