Author Topic: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle  (Read 127740 times)

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #100 on: 01/28/2013 03:37 pm »
Back from a long absence. More pictures shall be coming. Here's the first scan.

Top is a V2(!) sitting out at Pad 34, shot taken during the early 80's. Somebody or other was making a movie, and the Air Force obliged them. Was the movie "Marooned"? I do not recall. I quit watching movies when I was a kid. Apologies.

Middle is Joe Pessaro (electrical tech rep for BRPH [Briel, Rhame, Poynter, & Houser, Architects and Engineers]), Can't Remember Name (Gary?), Can't Remember Name (Olson Electric Field Boss and a nice guy), Jack Petty (structural tech rep for BRPH) in the PRC (Planning Research Corp) field trailer out at 39B.

Bottom is a shot of the innards of the catacombs, down inside the bowels of the pad. I did not scan and post this picture before, and I do not know why. So here it is now, with a snippet of words from a previous post that had a shot of the Flame Deflector.

"The interior of the pad is not solid all the way through. There are catacombs down there, complete with growing stalactites up in dim corners, the occasional cornered raccoon, or who knows what else, spooky, echoey, creepy dim halls and mystery rooms, and in the middle of it all, around a perfectly nondescript corner, there’s a little door, that you can stoop through, and come out up inside of the Flame Deflector. I always loved spelunking in the catacombs, and did so at every opportunity."

This image does not show the "little door" but instead depicts one of the large Sound Suppression Water pipes, right where it takes a turn and dives into the structure of the pad. If memory serves, those SSW pipes were either five or six feet in diameter and shoved a hell of a lot of water up under the Shuttle through large headers on the sides of the flame trench and into the MLP itself, just prior to ignition. Look on the floor, and you can see standing water, with what appears to be a caged ladder, laying down in it. Mystery equipment was always strewn here and there, in random places inside the catacombs, and you'd see it, and wonder to yourself, "Ok, how'd that get here?" but you'd never know the story. Above, running the length of the hallway on the left is a cable tray.

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #101 on: 01/28/2013 03:50 pm »
Top left, and bottom: Discovery, initial rollout onto Pad A. We just drove over there early in the morning from B Pad, and went around on the perimeter road to the east side, and then took the interior pad road toward the high-pressure gas tanks, and I was blazing away with my camera as we did so. Completely non-official. Interestingly, you can see the Orbiter Access Arm midway between being mated with the shuttle, and retracted back into the latchback position against the tower. We found out later that they had ever so slightly mispositioned the MLP on its support pedestals initially, and had to lift it up, put the crawler into reverse, and then go back forward to reposition it correctly and set it back down. We had, by complete random luck, arrived just as they were operationally backing out from the initial setting of the MLP, and the OAA was in the process of being retracted when these shots were taken.

Top right: Later, when all was well and the RSS was mated to the Orbiter.

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #102 on: 01/28/2013 04:16 pm »
I've decided to expand the scope of this little project a bit, and let people see a few "slice of life" images, too. Hope it's not a waste of time and some of it is of some small use or interest to somebody out there in internetland.

This page shows a "day in the life" view of what it's like for a kid growing up with a father who works out on the Cape.

Open House at KSC. Columbia. My son. Kai always wished he could have been around to see things like Alan Shepard going up for the first time and the launches of the Saturn V's with his own eyes like I did. So now, his children will be able to repay him the favor by telling him that they wish they could have been around to see the Space Shuttles with their own eyes. One of these days, somebody is going to be pestering their parents, wishing they could have been around and seen THE EARTH with their own eyes. The day must come.

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #103 on: 01/28/2013 04:28 pm »
Top and bottom: Open House KSC.

Top: Mate/Demate device out by the SLF (Shuttle Runway [Shuttle Landing Facility]).

Bottom: Kai on the centerline of the Shuttle Runway.

Middle: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Museum.

Top middle, Kai, nonchalantly perched in the nozzle of a Titan I.

Bottom middle: Kai admiring the Delta pads (Complex 17 A&B) from the deck of a LARC. The LARC's were used to drive around amphibiously on the Cape back when things were still falling out of the sky in pieces and setting the place on fire fairly often, back in the 50's and early 60's. I grew up immediately south of Patrick Air Force Base (the administrative center for the Cape) and would occasionally see these things come growling through the palmettos, spewing black diesel smoke, and then jusk keep on going, down the beach and into the ocean on calm waveless days (which Florida is very well endowed with). As all-terrain vehicles go, nothing beats a LARC.
« Last Edit: 01/28/2013 04:30 pm by 39B »

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #104 on: 01/28/2013 04:34 pm »
KSC Open House

Kai running toward the 747/Orbiter parked at the SLF.

Oh the joys of being a little kid when there's oodles of cool stuff to check out!

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #105 on: 01/28/2013 04:43 pm »
Picture I.D. extra images of myself they let me keep.

Me measuring the opening for the Centaur piping in the new security fencing that was being installed on B Pad.

Me standing on the pad deck without a hard hat on.

Discovery on A Pad.

Construction crew "beehive" sticker for the work on 39B (which I also had one of on my hard hat).

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #106 on: 01/28/2013 04:55 pm »
Driving to pad 39B along the beach road takes you right past 39A. One day, not too long after Columbia had first rolled to the pad, I surreptitiously stuck my camera out the car window and snagged these shots. Notice the white external tank. Only the first two launches had that white tank. After that they decided that they could save the weight of the coat of white paint and from then on, the tanks flew au naturale, bare and unpainted.

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #107 on: 01/28/2013 05:15 pm »
Growing Up With Rockets.

Top left: Shuttle Launch from the Titan III I.T.L. causeway (I had a pass and brought Kai along at the ungodly hour of 3am which he was totally up for doing, 'cause he LOVED watching launches from up close).

Top right: Kai in front of flown Gemini capsule heat shield at the KSC Visitors Center. While other kids wanted to do Disney and other kiddy stuff, Kai had no use for any of it, and it seemed as if almost every weekend the two of us would run off to KSC or CCAFS or Patrick Air Force Base and hang out at the museums (which were free at the time) or watch fighter jets on the flight line and play around, near and sometimes on, all that supercool stuff they had laying around all over the place. Good times.

Bottom left: School days, Cocoa Beach, Florida.

Bottom right: Kai, "driving" the "stretcher" that carried the Atlas missile. This was out at the Space Museum on CCAFS, and in more than just a few of these kinds of shots, it was me that was the instigator, not Kai. I'd try the door handle, discover it worked and the door opened up, and then I'd say "Go ahead, get in there and drive it and I'll take your picture," and he'd gigglingly get in and "drive," and I'd take his picture. The gray metal Atlas above him was pressurized just enough to keep it from collapsing. Real flight hardware. We did all kinds of crazy stuff like this together, and the standing joke between us was that (and remember, we're talking about a little six-year-old here) he was the "adult" and I was the "kid." We never got caught, never got in trouble, never hurt or damaged anything, and always had a blast.

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #108 on: 01/28/2013 05:42 pm »
Growing up with rockets.

Top left: Kai with flown Gemini capsule at KSC Visitors Center.

Top right: Kai's feet showing from beneath the nozzle of the Delta at the Air Force Space Museum at CCAFS. I do not know where else to tell this story, so I guess I'll tell it here.

I took Kai to the Air Force Space Museum for the first time, when he was TWO, and just toddling around. Even at that very early age, he knew how rockets worked. He'd been gobbling up picture books about it from day one. Anyway, I went out there with him and his mother, and we parked the car, and got out.

He gleefully ran a few steps from the car, and then stopped, looked directly up at, and considered the business-end of, a Rascal air-to-surface missile perched horizontally on its stand, right there next to him.

He then realized that this is the end of things that all of the fire comes out of, and then he further realized that the whole place was littered with lots more stuff that fire would come out of and he very reasonably freaked out and began wailing and crying in abject fear of his lethal surroundings.

For unknown reasons, I somehow figured all of that out with no real communication between the two of us, and then picked him up, and with him screaming and fighting me the whole way, I marched him out into the center of all those horrifying rockets, walked over to the same Delta (actually it's a Thor-Able, the precursor to the Delta) in the abovereferenced picture, grabbed his struggling little hand, and laid it firmly upon the exhaust nozzle.

For a second it was Pure Terror, but then it dawned upon him that no fire was coming out, nobody was getting burned, and things were actually perfectly safe for him to be around.

And in a twinkling, the wails ceased, the look on the face went from panic-stricken to gleeful realization, and he squirmed to be put down, which I did.

As soon as his feet touched the ground, he was off and running, and he ran like the wind from one rocket to the next, touching them all, laughing out loud, and in the end he more or less had to be dragged back to the car when it was time to go home.

Two-year-old kid.

How he knew, and how I knew, I'll never know. But he did, and I did, and a great love affair with real space hardware was kindled that day and neither one of us have ever regretted the least grain of it ever since.

Bottom: Kai leaning against the foot of the gantry at Complex 26, at the Air Force Space Museum. This is the pad that launched America's first satellite into orbit on a Jupiter-C back in 1958, and right next to it is the pad that Alan Shepard and then Gus Grissom took their first suborbital rides into the American history books.
« Last Edit: 01/28/2013 07:34 pm by 39B »

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #109 on: 01/28/2013 05:51 pm »
Growing up with rockets.

Kai, Air Force Space Museum, CCAFS.
« Last Edit: 01/28/2013 06:04 pm by 39B »

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #110 on: 01/28/2013 05:57 pm »
Growing up with rockets.

Sometimes when you take your son with you, when you go surfing up at Canaveral Jetty Park, a boat will come by with an SRB being pulled behind it. The waves at Jetty Park are pretty small and weak, but that's ok. There are other compensations.
« Last Edit: 01/28/2013 06:04 pm by 39B »

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #111 on: 01/28/2013 06:02 pm »
Growing up with rockets.

SRB, Port Canaveral. Looks a little burnt around the bottom end, eh?

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #112 on: 01/28/2013 06:43 pm »
Ok, back to work.

Top, middle, bottom, all left side: Steve Parker and James Dixon working on the E.T. access basket support monorail installation. It was a very windy day this day, and shortly before I took the shot of Steve down at the bottom, a strong gust blew his hardhat off. I do not think it survived the three hundred foot fall to the ground, out in the grass away from the pad.

Another story: This piece of equipment consisted of a long structural pipe bolted to the underside of the hammerhead crane, which carried an extensible monorail beam beneath it, which in turn supported a trolly that rolled along the bottom flange of the monorail beam with rigging to carry a spider basket on a wire rope that could be raised or lowered for a technician to inspect the foam insulation on the side of the external tank that faced away from the RSS when the RSS was mated with the Orbiter.

More than just a little contrapted.

But it gets better.

This rigamaroo was hurriedly designed and implemented after it was discovered on one of the first cryo tanking operations over on A Pad, that foam insulation had popped off of the tank due to thermal expansion and contraction. And they had no way to access the area without rolling the whole stack back to the VAB. Which was a Big No-No, 'cause it would impact the schedule and Make People Look Bad.

So this goofy thing was cooked up.

But it could not possibly work in the real world, despite Looking Good On Paper.

Imagine a heavy spider basket, with a heavy technician and his tools in it, waving around suspended by a wire rope in the same kind of wind that removed Steve Parker's hardhat from his head. Now imagine that same heavy device banging into the exposed skin of the E.T.

Yikes!

Never gonna happen.

Anybody who's spent any time in Florida is well aware that even the calmest of windless days can go to a roaring gale in an alarmingly short period of time.

Which they figured out eventually, and after installing this nightmare on Pad A, they came to their senses, instructed that it never be used, took it down, cut it up, and scrapped the pieces.

Ok, fine.

Except that, as all this is going on over at A, we're receiving delivery of the exact same kludged hardware, where we were working on B.

And I myself kicked an RFI (Request For Information) into the system in behalf of my boss, Dick Walls, offering a credit to NASA, for not installing this piece of junk on B Pad.

And after due consideration, the wise operatives at NASA replied to our RFI with instructions to mind our own business, leave the engineering to the engineers, and install the damn thing like it shows on the drawing.

We were stupefied at the lunacy of this reply, but did as we were told, and were duly paid for the work, as specified in the original contract.

Shortly after which time we were issued a change order, from the very same people at NASA who denied our original RFI, instructing us to remove the whole thing, cut it into pieces, and scrap it!

Which we did, and which we were paid extra for, since it was not in the original contract.

Is this not insane?

Yes, it is insane.

I marvel that the rockets even fly at all, considering some of the things I've seen out there.

Middle right: Unknown, working just beneath the floor of the RCS Room, on one of the Payload Bay Kit platforms that sit on the exterior of the main doors on the Payload Changeout Room, climbing from the platform up onto a float. I do not remember what precisely was being worked on at this time.
 
« Last Edit: 01/28/2013 06:45 pm by 39B »

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #113 on: 01/28/2013 06:55 pm »
Top left: One of the Skinner Brothers. I think it's Dave, but it might be Steve, working along an orbiter mold line fixed platform.

Top right: Mystery framing. I do not know why I took this picture or exactly where it is on the RSS.

Bottom left: PBK & Contingency Platform framing iron going up on the RSS.

Bottom right: Pretty girl.


Offline Ares67

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #114 on: 01/28/2013 06:55 pm »
It's really great that you're continuing with this incredible thread. Thanks for the unique views and interesting background stories.

I like the 39 "bee" badge... and Kai was a lucky kid for sure!

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #115 on: 01/28/2013 07:05 pm »
Ok folks, that's it. That's the last of the 39B shots in my collection.

I hope you've had some fun with it and I hope even more that perhaps a smidgen of missing information has been restored to the greater realm of common knowledge that may be of some small use to someone some day.

I also have shots (but not as many) of the work at Complex 41 for Titan IV, and also shots (even less) of the modifications to CX 36, Atlas Centaur, that followed the return of the expendable vehicle programs following the Challenger Disaster.

And if anyone is interested in more "day in the life" stuff of those of us who grew up with, and worked, out at KSC and CCAFS, I've got that too.

Thanks, one and all, for taking the time to view my humble efforts.
« Last Edit: 01/28/2013 07:22 pm by 39B »

Offline 39B

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #116 on: 01/28/2013 07:07 pm »
It's really great that you're continuing with this incredible thread. Thanks for the unique views and interesting background stories.

I like the 39 "bee" badge... and Kai was a lucky kid for sure!

Kai did pretty good for himself, and has grown up into the exact Honest, Intelligent, Kind, and Strong, human being that I always hoped he would. And what parent in this world could ever ask for more than that?

I am truly one of the luckiest people on earth.

Offline brad2007a

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #117 on: 02/01/2013 07:14 pm »
"Top is a V2(!) sitting out at Pad 34, shot taken during the early 80's. Somebody or other was making a movie, and the Air Force obliged them. Was the movie "Marooned"? I do not recall. I quit watching movies when I was a kid. Apologies."

V2, early 80's....Could it possibly be the filming of the "Space" (as in James Michener's book) TV miniseries?

Love all the pics, BTW.
« Last Edit: 02/01/2013 07:19 pm by brad2007a »
Democrats haven't been this mad at Republicans since the Republicans took away their slaves..

Offline Chris-A

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #118 on: 02/06/2013 07:39 pm »
Amazing photos. It all started with a photo trying to correct the discoloration, and the results are pretty good. Here are the photos I've processed so far in Photoshop. I hope to finish up the rest soon.

Right click in the upper right corer of the photo to view in full size.
Enjoy. ;D

http://imgur.com/a/rb5Z3


I'll post the images here, as the image site will delete the photos after 6 months.
« Last Edit: 02/17/2013 04:51 pm by Chris-A »

Online DaveS

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Re: Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos - Space Shuttle
« Reply #119 on: 02/06/2013 08:07 pm »
Excellent work!
"For Sardines, space is no problem!"
-1996 Astronaut class slogan

"We're rolling in the wrong direction but for the right reasons"
-USA engineer about the rollback of Discovery prior to the STS-114 Return To Flight mission

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