The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Page 70: IAA Lift, Steve Parker and James MacLaren on the FSS/RSS 220'-0" Crossover Catwalk.
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And this is the final image in the series that depicts the IAA Lift, and, as with the previous one, it too is not included with the "group" on Page 68, this time because... well... it doesn't really add anything to the images of the lift itself.
This is more or less a "throwaway" image, and is showing me on the right, with Steve Parker, who was one of the ironworker foremen at the time, during a short break in the action, as the IAA, which you can see directly behind us, still hanging from the crane hook, was undergoing final bolt-up.
Once again, alas, I do not properly recall who I handed my camera to, to get this photograph.
My gut is telling it was Jack Petty, BRPH's Tech Rep, but that's only because by this time, Jack and I had become as thick as thieves, and had found out that, despite being from opposite sides of the "house," we could get everything done faster and better by closing ranks together and proceeding on our own, narrowly-focused on the issue-of-the-moment, and because of that, we were in each other's company more than anyone else's. A bond of trust had formed, and once formed, it had become unbreakable, and I thank my lucky stars that I somehow wound up working with somebody like Jack, who was an ex-ironworker (he fell down a rope one fine day while still working as a Union Ironworker, and injured himself permanently in doing so, and maybe I'll tell you that story too, some time, but not now).
Following his injury he was still plenty mobile enough, and if you did not know, you would never notice, but his back and legs took a pretty good hit, and to place him in a gang with other ironworkers would perhaps not be in their best interests owing to his reduced physical capabilities, and so he got out, and moved on to other pursuits, and he wound up doing just fine for himself thank you very much, but in his heart, he always remained an ironworker.
So yeah, I'm sure he was around for the whole lift (again, an old man's swiss-cheese memories aren't giving me a damn thing by way of recalling that directly), and once they had gone solidly steel-on-steel up there, and were now chewing up the time involved with inserting the bolts into those aggravating goddamned "cinderblocks" and torquing them down, and nothing else was outwardly occurring, we became free to maybe take a little break up there before heading back down to our respective field trailers, and at some point Steve Parker happened along, and me being me, I buttonholed him and had him pose for a few seconds, while Jack walked over to the "demate" half of this set of FSS/RSS Crossover Catwalks coming off of the FSS at 220'-0" with my camera in order to put the work in progress right behind us, turned around, told us to smile, and...
...click.
And Steve Parker was a Good Man, and you've already seen him, and if you do not recall, that's him, a split second after his hardhat was blown off by the wind, up on the Hammerhead Crane, working the TPS Inspection Spider Basket Trolley Support Extensible Pipe Boom Psychosis, which we covered back on Page 55, in the third image down from the top.
This is one of those images that pains me deeply owning to the fact that, every since the photograph was taken, none of the principals, nor their families, have ever seen them.
This distresses me. People need to see. People need to know. Lives once lived. Who they were. Where they were. What they did.
Snatched away like a scrap of loose paper on a cold northwest wind in January.
And no, I do not like it, and that too distresses me because of my inability to actually do anything about it.
I can only hope that some of them see this stuff.
Lives once lived.
Sigh.
My understanding (Warning: Old Man's Memories Alert) is that Steve went on to become the Business Agent for Local 808, and following that, he moved out of state into a career with the International, up in New York.
Maybe. I can neither verify, nor prove, any of it.
What I do know is that Steve was sharp, even-tempered, well-organized, articulate, and deeply-knowledgeable, but brooked no bullshit from anybody.
If only I had more for you than this pittance...
Sigh.
Otherwise, there's not a whole lot going on with this photograph, by way of properly instructive or informative information, with the sole exception of the Camera Mount which is mostly-visible behind the handrails of the Crossover Catwalk, down there in the lower left corner of the image. And I guess maybe the Light Fixture immediately to its right, too, but that's Electrician Work, and I'm not gonna be getting into Electrician Work with this thing any more than I really have to. It's a light. Flip the switch, the light comes on. Any questions?
But the Camera Mount has a bit of structure to it, and we were the ones who had to furnish and install all of that crap, and it was a part of my job to go around, find every damn one of these things after Rink, or whoever, came down from the tower on one of his periodic visits to the field trailer and advised that it was done, give it a proper look, not only to verify that it was constructed exactly per The Plans and Specifications, but also to verify that it had been located correctly, in the correct location on the correct piece of steel that it got bolted or welded to, then hit it with a pink highlighter on the Erection Drawing to indicate it had been erected, and then (phew, there really is a lot of shit that has to go on with this stuff) give that information to my boss Dick Walls, on a piece of paper, so that he could create his own piece of paper, to submit to Sauer Mechanical (who we were subcontracted to), so that they could submit it to NASA on their own paper, to let them verify the work was done, also per The Plans and Specifications (with personnel on the NASA side of the house in QC, Engineering, Configurations, Scheduling, Finance, Younameit, gah...) or otherwise we don't get paid for the work, which means it was of paramount importance to go through all this shit, for every goddamned thing we did out there, so... ok.
So Camera Mount.
We've talked about Camera Mounts and Camera Platforms a few times already, and we did the Platforms in detail back on Page 66, and we've sort of crossed paths with the Mounts, and now the time has come to do those things in proper detail, too.
Here's Image 128 again, with the Camera Mount labeled, just to make damn good and sure that we're all on the same page here with this thing.
And here's 79K24048 sheet S-96, also labeled, to let you know exactly where we are, and also, as a special bonus, you actually get to see the FSS/RSS Crossover Catwalk at elevation 220'-0" in its RSS retracted position instead of the mated position you almost always see it in, with every other goddamned drawing that was ever made. The catwalk has been rendered in grossly-oversimplified (and less than fully-accurate) form, and most of the time that makes things worse, but this is one of the vanishingly-few instances where oversimplification becomes helpful, insofar as it better allows you to see the path across that catwalk, going from the FSS to the RSS.
But I feel pretty confident that it was not done with any kindness of heart, and instead constitutes yet another example of how 79K24048 just kind of swipes at things, hitting the high spots, going by them way too fast on the fly, in an effort to make the PRC/BRPH corporation more money by cutting drafting and engineering labor hours down to the bone, taking a look at what they did, deciding that they're still not making enough money yet, and then whacking away at the bone, too. So ok. So bonus oversimplified path points for you. Tra la la.
This particular Camera Mount (and the distinction between camera mounts and camera supports seems to be that the support is what the mount is bolted or welded down on top of, but maybe don't bet the whole farm on that one, 'cause you might wind up farmless if you do), for OTV Camera 72 lived on existing structural framing up there, as opposed to a dedicated piece of channel iron, or bracket, or whatever else, specifically designed, fabricated, and installed so as they would have something to affix the Camera Mount to, via welding, bolting, sticking it down with bubble-gum, or whatever.
And the Mounts themselves attempted to be as forgiving in this regards as possible, in a sort of semi-standardized effort to reduce fabrication and erection of new steel to put 'em on, but you can only go so far with a thing like that, and their best efforts not withstanding, they still wound up putting in a bunch of Miscellaneous Metals anyway, to hold a lot of these things in place.
As you drift along through this thing, looking at all the photographs as you're doing so, maybe keep an eye out for these Camera Mounts, in all of their multifarious incarnations, with or without an actual Camera sitting on top of 'em, and then maybe further give things a good squinting at, to see what they're attached to. Horizontal channel iron with the flanges pointing downward was a favorite, but by no means a majority opinion in the matter. And whenever you're someplace with an unobstructed view toward the Vehicle, either on the FSS or the RSS, or anyplace else with a vantage point to be watching things that might be going on from an operational or security point of view, any time you see some trifling thing or other that seems to serve no purpose in and of itself, it might be one of those Supports, before the Mount was fastened to it. Maybe. Maybe not, too. Either way, you've already seen a lot of this stuff, in particular the Supports, without even realizing it.
And to conclude this delve into our Camera Mounts, let's return to 79K24048 sheet S-40 (which we were first introduced to back on Page 66), where I've highlighted it to let you see the specific details required to fabricate and install the Camera Mount for our good friend OTV Camera 72, which we see in the image up at the top of this page.
And you look at a thing like that, and ok, yes, they really did do their best to kind of "standardize" this stuff, and they really did do their best to depict all possible incarnations of this stuff, but my memory is niggling me with a half-remembered story wherein we had to submit an RFI on this particular Camera Mount anyway, and that was because the W8x24 that it's sitting on does not have any steel-bar grating resting on top of it, and when we got to looking into it, we realized that would alter the ability of that W8x24 to resist torsion, and the drawing makes no allowance for beams that are not covered with grating, and dammit, what happens if the fucked-up thing starts wagging around all over the place while it's doing its job of photographing the Space Shuttle lifting off, and... yeah.
Nothing can be taken for granted out here. Not. One. Damn. Thing. And we'd be furnishing and installing something that was not properly covered by the Contract Documents, which would then place the entire burden on our shoulders solely (Even if NASA QC did sign-off on it, it would still be our fault.) if Something Unpleasant was to occur...
And so yet another piece of paper went fluttering out the door on the very first step of its torturous journey, wending its way through the Submittal Labyrinth, bound for the inner depths of NASA Engineering, where somebody was gonna have to look it over, and pronounce judgment upon it...
And as I recall (dimly), they determined that it would ok as shown, with the two plates and long bolts pinching them together on the W8, with no concerns for any grating that might not be there...
And then you step back, out to the Pad Perimeter Fence maybe, give The Whole Thing a look, and realize just how fine grained it all had to be...
And you find yourself marveling that any of it could ever have been built in the first place...
Never mind all of it.
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