The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Page 69: Intertank Access Arm Lift, Final Bolt-up.
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This photograph, by rights, should be included in the series on the previous page, but in deference to the Union Ironworkers you see here doing their job, I've broken it out into its own page, that you may better consider them on their terms.
And we have gone from viewing things at a distance, to breathing down people's necks, and those people did not need some jerk with a camera trying to stick his thumb up their assholes, and I was getting looks, but me being me, I knew that I could dart in there, just for a bare moment, aim the camera, hit the shutter release, and then get the hell back out of there before someone decided to give me a little personal attention. And it worked.
So it's all good.
Barely.
And without the intrusion into their world, you don't get to see what's going on in that world, and from this remove of decades, even the participants would agree that what I did produced a pretty damn good result without also interfering, although if I was to try it again tomorrow, one of 'em might decide to come at me with a sleever bar, so there's that, too.
You are presumed to understand the structure of the IAA and the FSS it's being attached to, to the extent that Page 68 and everything that came before it has informed you about it.
And this connection is a fucking weirdie!
I never did figure out why they did it the way they did, but I guess we'll have to start off by telling you that those stacked "cinder blocks" you're seeing to the right of our ironworker who's only partially-visible, down in the the hole, are no such thing.
Cinderblocks would be ground to literal dust before you could say, "Hey, wait a minute!" in a place like this, getting pinched between an incoming object that weighs "only" 100,000 pounds and the thing it's coming into contact with that weighs 4 million pounds.
Cinderblocks?
Nah, I don't think so.
That stuff is fairly heavy iron, looks to the contrary notwithstanding.
And it forms the heart of the matter in my lack of understanding of this connection, because it is also the heart of the connection.
We do not have drawings of the IAA, but we do have drawings of the IAA Support Structure, and some of this stuff shows up there, so let's go take a look at it, and maybe see how a thing like this works, ok?
And the photograph is showing us work being done at the connection between the FSS Perimeter Column at Side 1-4 and the IAA, at elevation 220'-0", so we'll focus on that area with our drawings of the six IAA Connection Weldments on the FSS and the IAA Support Structure, with two each, one on either side of the IAA, at 220'-0", 208'-0", and 200'-0", ok?
But of course, to fully understand what's going on up there at 220'-0", we're gonna need to know what's going on beneath it, with the rest of things, and in particular, Drawing Package 79K10338 (which harkens back to Wilhoit Days during a time I was not there) is working from low to high, as well it should, and down there at elevation 200'-0" with this thing, there's a bit of interestingness.
So we toodle on over to 79K10338 sheet S-91, which is showing us the Support Structure at elevation 200'-0" and give it a look.
And yeah, it's nice to know how things are put together here, and ok, they're showing us the connections in plan view over on the right-hand side, and they're telling us to go elsewhere to get better detail on how to build the damn things, and ok, that's nice, but what's going on with those notes over there in the top-right corner of the drawing?
The "Structural Design Data - IAA Support Structure" stuff.
Give that shit a look, wouldja?
And in particular, give Note 'C' a look, in comparison with Note 'D'.
And...
Whoa!
Note 'D' tells us that we need to design things to safely deal with Hurricane Wind at the "205 FT. LEVEL" which they're giving us as being "164 MPH" and yeah, you've certainly managed to get yourself deep enough into Category 5 Hurricane territory with that kind of wind, which is not a pleasant thought, and yeah, it would be nice if it didn't blow the IAA off of the tower.
And they go on to tell us that the actual loading for a thing like that comes in at 89.44 pounds per square foot and that's one HELL of a goddamned load, and if you've got something with the cross-section of the IAA, which we'll simplify as being twelve feet across, looking at it straight-on (which is the narrow way, remember) and twenty feet high (it's actually more than that, and quite a bit more when approached from different angles by different hurricanes packing that same wallop coming at you from different directions), and when you punch those numbers into the equation calculator, it happily spits back an answer telling us that we're seeing 21,465.6 pounds of force pushing against a surface of that size, and really, a thing that's only twenty feet high by twelve feet wide ain't all so very large and yet...
21,465.6 pounds of force is shoving at it, trying to knock it down, or tear it loose, or some damn god-awful thing, and holy fuck, no wonder hurricanes do such a good job of rendering the whole town into jumbled wreckage!
But that's not even the point, here.
Hang on.
It gets better.
Now go back to Note 'C' and give that motherfucker another look, now that you have the understanding that Note 'D' just gave you, about the ferocity of a Cat V hurricane.
And this time it's not a hurricane.
Not at all.
It's something worse.
It's sound.
Sound?
Yeah, sound.
And how in the name of all that's Right and True does fucking sound become worse than a goddamned Category Five Hurricane, may I ask?
And once again, here we find ourselves standing, in jaw-dropped stupification, completely unable to deal with it, trying to wrap our minds around the insane power of the Space Shuttle.
And things just keep going waaaay off-scale, in new and different ways, every damn time we look at it!
Jeesus fuck!
Observe.
Note 'C' is telling us about "Acoustic Loads" and for the love of all hell, it goes on to tell us that we can expect to see 500 pounds per square foot of "LOCALIZED STRESS" in either the horizontal or vertical direction.
Five.
Hundred.
Pounds.
Per.
Square.
Foot.
Which is over five times greater than a motherfucking Category Five Hurricane.
And it's hammering the IAA as the Shuttle goes by at liftoff, headed straight up, with PEOPLE in it, because of...
SOUND.
And this might be the most superlative, of all the superlatives, that you will find this insane machine continuously raining down upon you, every time you look at it from a different point of view.
You can never personally understand 500 pounds per square foot of acoustic force.
In similar manner as you can never understand the inner guts, the central core of evil, of a Cat V hurricane, from a position standing out there fully exposed to it, unprotected. To stand unprotected in a wind that comes screaming in to you at "164 MPH" is to be instantaneously hurled at that velocity into the first still-remaining solid object you encounter, or beneath opaque and violently-churning water, never to be seen again.
The best you can do with the damned hurricane is to walk around through the wreckage after it's over, seeing things that cannot be true, except that they are, and then you think about the Space Shuttle, from close range, and...
Your brain will never be granted permission to go to such a place.
Permission denied!
And of a thing like that, you should be glad, because if permission were to be granted, you would already be dead before the acoustic forces had finished their terrible and abrupt ramping up to a maximum.
It does not get the crew, but it's very close to them, and this is a place where humans were never meant to be, and yet they still go there.
Respect for the crew knows no upper bound, and we learn that respect, piece by piece, as we continue our narrative through this Place That Should Never Be.
Ok. Back to the photograph. Back to the connection weldment.
Back to the "cinderblocks."
We just saw things in plan view for elevation 200'-0" (complete with a totally mind-boggling "Acoustic Loads" design note), so let us continue on upward, and look at them for 208'-0" and 220'-0" just for the sake of completeness, ok?
With 79K10338 sheet S-92 for 208'-0" and 79K10338 sheet S-93 for 220'-0", and yes, we've been here before, but now we're here again anyway, because we're here on other business this time, that, thankfully, has nothing at all to do with fucked-up Hydrogen, and if you haven't learned anything else with this stuff by now, the one thing you should have learned is that anything shown on any drawing, that does not fall under the heading of "stuff we're interested in right now", may as well have been rendered in invisible ink, because... your brain just will not pick that stuff up, most of the time.
Sometimes your brain actually will pick it up, but far far too often... nope. You can almost feel your brain saying, "Haven't you already busted my ass enough with what you're making me squint at in a near-hopeless attempt at gaining understanding of this crap? I'm giving you this (barely), and you had better be damn good and glad you're getting this much, because you just as for sure as hell is hot ain't getting any more," and of course whatever might fall under the heading of "any more" at any given time, simply fails to register.
Which, of course, is why we find ourselves so very often returning again and again to the scene of the same old crime, sifting clues, looking for previously-missed details in addition to occasional previously-missed full-sized rhinoceroses, too.
And we see in our plan views that things look a lot the same, but with differences of course, and as with S-91, we're being given section cuts and detail callouts for the connections to the IAA, and that's where we'll go now, and quite the strange and wonderful place it is.
And back we go, back once again to 79K10338 sheet S-93, and this time I highlighted it to point out Detail C, and to further point out the fact that, in the general plan view of the IAA Support Structure, the part that connects to the IAA, the part that welds down to the FSS Side 1 and Side 4 faces of that Perimeter Column over there, has been merrily swept away, completely off the playing field, with a bland little note that says "Conn On This Faces Not Shown For Clarity", and ain't that just ducky-wonderful, and ain't that also just about the most precious example of Engineerese as a spoken and written language you could ever ask for, insofar as we get to learn about "This Faces."
Spot those fuckers the C and the T and they still couldn't spell the word "cat" for you, even if their lives depended on it.
And, as you can plainly see, their grammar is also none too wonderful. And since grammar is what's down there underneath everything else holding it all up, giving spoken and written language its meaning...
On a, never forget, oh-fish-all piece of NASA Contract Documentation, the likes of which too often wind up in courts of law, being used as swords in battle against very worthy opponents, and if it just so happens that your sword-blade is a little... rusted here and there... yeah.
Ok.
And disregarding the non-existence of stuff that oughtta be showing on Sides 1 and 4 of that Column, but isn't, maybe see if you can make any sense at all, out of the beef-up that gets done to the FSS Main Framing Perimeter Beams that connect to the Column over there on Sides 2 and 3, hmm?
That work was done by Wilhoit before I ever first laid eyes on the place, and I can just imagine the fun that Cecil Wilhoit, Tom Kirby, and Red Milliken had with that one.
That goddamned thing is ugly!
Almost like some kind of foreshadowing of the bullshit we constantly keep dealing with in the 79K24048 drawings.
Most very unRS&H-like, but even the best occasionally stub their toes on stuff, despite working so very hard to avoid doing so. Although, having just written those words, and having just drawn my own attention to this end of things, I see that somebody has come along and washed the RS&H box off of all the title blocks for the whole series of 79K10338 drawings from S-91 through S-99 and that's the exact series that depicts the IAA Support Structure, and instead of the little RS&H box down there, it's been replaced with an inscrutable little note that says "* For Record Only: 79K07810" and if that ain't begging for further research, I don't know what is.
Is 79K07810 the Structural Package for the IAA?
Dunno.
Is the whole thing some kind of half-buried change order from a previous version of things?
Dunno.
Interesting, interesting, interesting.
So ok. So we shall hereby absolve RS&H of any charges of fuckery with this one, and maybe start looking around for a more likely suspect elsewhere...
Perhaps with initials that start with PRC...
...but not now.
We need to figure out what these damn "cinderblocks" are doing up there.
So ok, so where are the fucking "cinderblocks" anyway?
Let's go find 'em.
Ok, here they they are on 79K10338 sheet S-98, just like Section Callout 'G' from S-93 said they would be.
How nice.
Now what?
Fucking thing still don't make sense.
I think I need to mark it up a little more, maybe.
Except... that ain't gonna be easy.
This whole place in here is very deceptive.
And when we start looking, we discover that Image 127 is in on the deception, too.
So I guess I'm gonna have to mark that up, too.
Dammit.
We'll do 79K10338 sheet S-98 in a heavily doctored-up state, first, to identify all the players and let you see where they are and how they fit together with each other.
Lovely, eh?
Compare it with the original 79K10338 sheet S-98 , please, to really appreciate the differences, ok? Looking at this god-awful mess in Image 127 is no walk in the park, and I want you to understand what you're seeing, but at some point, the inclusion of additional aids toward understanding starts to become counterproductive, and the more of that crap you put in there, the less you understand, and...
Why the fuck did they have to make these IAA connections so fucking weird, anyway?
Never before, and never since, have I ever crossed paths with such a kludged-up mess of steel plates welded everywhichaway to each other like this thing is.
Somewhere, in a dark corner someplace, there's a story, and what I'd give to learn that story. But alas, I know for a fact that I never will, and it pains me greatly, because I know without the slightest doubt, that it's a good story.
This thing did not happen as a "clean sheet" design.
Somebody got backed into this corner, against their will, screaming and yelling the whole way, as whatever it was that demanded this monstrosity, inexorably kept pushing and pushing and pushing them into that corner.
And of course the generalized "look" of the drawing itself, is also telling us this same story, with too much white space, and what's up with Section 'AN' sitting there down below Section 'G', where it's cut from? That plan view depiction in AN is how you see things looking down on them, and draftspeople will, as often as possible, put them up above the top side of anything they're cut from, to further let you know you're looking down on something from above. But not this thing. Oh no. My guess is that whatever AN replaced was up there above G, until they learned they were gonna have to put that handrail stub up there instead.
And what's up with a nomenclature like "AN" anyway? The standard for that stuff, is that you go through the entire alphabet before you start prepending letters, and with that in mind, what would have been "AA" would also have been the 27th iteration of this crap, and then they had to go all the way past that to grab the letter "N" to use it, and...
...what in the name of fuck was going on with all of that bullshit?
So yeah. Partially washed-off title block. Weird acreage of white spaces. Details in weird places. Details with weird names. Yeah...
This one fails utterly to pass the smell test, and yes indeed, I really would love to know all of the story that goes with it.
Sigh.
And now I'm gonna have to go after Image 127 in similar manner, plastering it up with no end of densely-woven crap, in a bleak effort to show you what you're already staring right at, both so as you might understand, and also as yet another example of just how insanely devious structural steel is when you're attempting to make sense of it simply by looking at it. Nevermind trying to make sense of it when you're building it.
Seeing is not believing.
Hoo boy, is it ever.
Image 127, greatly altered by darkening it, coloring it, sharpening-up some of the colored parts, labeled, with arrows.
That Vertical "Flange" Plate on the FSS, along with the Horizontal Top Stiffener Plate that welds to it, are both a certified bitch to visualize. The Vertical Plate near-completely blocks our view of the Horizontal Plate, and the FSS Beef-up Steel near-completely blocks our view of the Vertical Plate. And that's not enough, because...
Complicating matters with these guys is that you're looking pretty much exactly along the angled cut of the clipped edge on the Horizontal Plate, and then further looking pretty much exactly along the edge of the cut-plane on the angle-trimmed top of the Vertical Plate, too, and, god damn it, those two fucks have decided, out of pure malicious glee, to further line themselves up together, right where they come together, and... feh.
Here's Image 127 again, this time merely colored, now that you have looked at the darkened and labeled version first, and have it to refer back to when you get lost, which you will still do, even though you already know what everything is, and where everything is.
And then, yeah, the unaltered version of Image 127, just to keep it close to the other versions, for a bit more ease of jumping back and forth between the links, comparing each of them with the others.
And the doctored-up drawing, close by for easy reference and comparison.
And the original undoctored version of the drawing, too.
Allofit right here together in loving harmony, nice and easy to get to, nice and easy to open up and marvel at, because...
...because I'm such a nice guy.
This is by far the best image I've got, when it comes to illustrating all of the nasty side effects associated with attempting to gain nothing more than a simple understanding of the goddamned thing, when you find yourself grappling with Horseshit Design in conjunction with the amazing ability of structural steel to confound and confuse, visually. Number one. Best of the bunch. The bastard.
And ok, now that you know where the IAA Wide-Flange Member is, maybe have a look at those fasteners sitting over there on its top flange.
The ones that are mostly obscured (isn't everything in this image?) by the upstanding stiffener plates on that weird-ass way-overdone Handrail with the panels that could be raised and lowered, covered with expanded-metal screen. And no, I never learned what that crap was all about, either.
Back to the fasteners, ok?
One bolt, with a washer on it, and one nut, possibly partially-threaded down onto a (hidden) bolt, just one thread, maybe two, just enough to keep 'em together, or maybe it's simply the matching nut for that bolt we see right there behind it, I really do not know.
Just... laying there.
Literal inches away from either side of the wide-flange beam they're resting upon.
And how far is that torch hose from 'em?
And is the guy holding the torch looking at either the hose or the loose fasteners, or is he doing his job like he's supposed to (he is) and paying very close attention to whatever it is that his buddy down in the hole there just in front of him is doing?
And people wonder how stuff always seems to find sneaky ways to go over the side.
And they tell you to not be hanging around underneath this kind of stuff, and dammit, they know what they're talking about, and they probably know what they're talking about because they've... seen a few things.
Hell, I've told you, too.
And of course the fact that we've got a guy with a torch, armed and dangerous, ready to go, sitting right there, is trying its hardest to tell us what the interference was that kept them from proceeding with connecting this monstrosity straightaway, but I can't quite understand what it's saying. It's too faint. It's too far away.
And I'm sure we'll never know.
And another lost story, gone forever, lets out one last faint cry, in the form of a guy with a torch in his hands, and then silence fills in all around for...
...forever.
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