The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Page 73: Back of the RSS Viewed From Underneath It, Just Swingin and Misclocked Monorail Hoists.
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And you're up there doing some damn thing or other, and you have your camera with you, and you find yourself on the Pad Deck, almost, but not quite, underneath the RSS, over near the Column Line 7 end of things, with a marvelous view, up and across, of the back of this astounding... thing, with another astounding... thing, just past it, and it's all looming up into the sky like some kind of cyclopean fever dream and...
They're just starting. Just starting to get set up for some pretty substantial 79K24048 modifications, wherein the old, very small, Anteroom, gets greatly enlarged and extended, all along the back side of the RSS, cantilevered beyond Line A (out to... Line Negative A?), running behind the PCR almost to Column Line 6, enclosed by a much-enlarged perimeter Catwalk which will wrap all the way around it, plus the addition of a wholly-new Storage Room, which will flill the mostly-open gap at the 135'-7" level, the Main Floor Level of the RSS, between Column Lines 6 and 7, and then the enlarged Catwalk will continue on around, out past Column Line 7, and then turning, and extending across to the front of the RSS, on Line B, doubling back on itself over on that side of things to a point midway between Lines 6 and 5.
This thing changed the whole look of the RSS in the areas where it was constructed.
And in order for Union Ironworkers to get pretty much anything done, they must first carry their floats across high steel out to those specific locations where the torching and welding and bolting will be done, and then tie them into place by hanging them on ropes, to give themselves a proper work platform from which they can then do the work.
And the floats are large enough, and heavy enough, and awkward enough to handle that...
Not just anybody is going to be able to do this sort of thing. Most people would be unable to emplace a float correctly, securely, and safely, while standing on solid ground, nevermind being tasked with doing it by taking it out across exposed steel beams and framework eighty feet above unyielding concrete.
So the simple fact of just setting up becomes...
...significant.
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