Fitch R. Williams wrote:

Jeff Wisnia wrote:


A nice PowerPoint presentation showing many photos of the prelaunch
assembly of the Space Shuttle, boosters and payload.


Thanks for the link. It's excellent.

I've been all over the VAB over the years. Those are excellent pictures
but they simply can't do it justice. No pictures can. That building is
flat out huge but there isn't anything in the pictures that will allow
you to scale it in your mind because you can't see enough of it in a
picture.

I saw it getting built in the early 1960s when I'd be down at Canaveral
for launches of the smaller rockets of those days. I believe the
building was completed around 1965.

Over the years I've heard that the VAB is such a tall "one story
building" that without deliberate prevention means, clouds can form near
the ceiling and rain falls inside.

I don't know if that's an urban legend or not, and cites on the web have
it both ways.

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia
(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
The speed of light is 1.98*10^14 fathoms per fortnight.


Standing in the main aisle it is hard to figure out how the shuttle will
get from there to the other side of the wall in the assembly area. Then
looking up till your neck hurts, you see a "door" that is so high up you
can easily miss it. That "little door" way up there is big enough to
pass the shuttle through standing on end! It is so far up it doesn't
look very big from floor level. The "forklift" that installs the SSME
is pretty huge too.

The station parts are pretty big as well. Some of them (modules and
solar array launch packages) fill the Shuttle bay. The station itself
is getting bigger with every assembly launch. It is a magnificent
technical accomplishment.

When people were working on Y2K running around worrying about database
crashes ending life as we know it (which didn't happen) I used to tell
folks who asked what I was doing about it "I'm not doing anything, I'm
working on Y5B".

Some of them got it, some didn't.

Fitch