Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B Construction Photos

Page 15

PGHM Bridge Beam Lift, Page 4 (Original Scan)


In the top left photo, an ironworker is about to hop across and get onto the bridge beam. That's a pretty fair gap between him and the bridge beam, and the bottom of that gap is cold iron, four or five stories down.

Ho hum, just another day on the job.

Wade Ivey hovered around the entire time. He started out as an ironworker, and knew just exactly what was what. He's dressed in a dark blue jacket with white and red at the base of the sleeves.

By the bottom left photo, the bridge beam had begun to come around, into place up just under the ceiling of the PCR. By now it was nighttime, and the interior lights were on. I'm not sure, but I think this shot was taken after I came back with the chicken that Wade had bought for everyone.

In the bottom right photo, it's getting close to where it belongs. One of the last shots I took before I departed for the day.

Additional commentary below the image.





Top RIGHT: (Full-size)

Please note that we're looking at the top right-hand photograph in this image first. I put them into the album out of precise time-order and the right-hand image was taken before the left-hand image, and it's necessary to know this if you're following this lift closely, watching how things were done.

And how, you might ask, do we know that this image was taken before the top left image?

And the answer is in the rigging.

In this image, the nylon sling on the jib-line hook is still right where it's always been. In the top left image, it is no longer there. And that's how we know.

To take this frame, I've come back inside of the PCR after exiting it briefly to get the bottom right image on the previous page, and am on level 5 of the left-hand interior platform set, looking down, across, and toward the back side of the PCR.

Along the back wall of the PCR, and going around and continuing along the right wall, red firex water piping can be seen. NASA was very excitable about fires in all of their facilities, and considering some of the outrageously volatile stuff they were working with on a regular basis out there, all over the place, that high level of concern is fully justified.

So there were fire sprinklers all over the goddamned place, with nice bright-red runs of firex pipe feeding water to every one of them.

On the bridge beam, clearly we have a long ways to go before it's in its final resting place.

Two men are riding the suspended load, hard at work attaching such rigging as will be needed to force that sonofabitch around, into, and through, whatever twists and turns will still be required to get it into place. You can now see that the big Manitowoc is still well and truly in the game, with its jib line, headache ball, hook, and nylon sling, all sitting right there in front of us. And maybe take note of the size of that headache ball. Yes, it's closer to us than the ironworker immediately above and to the right of it in this frame (who's name might be "Sonny" and henceforth I shall call him "Sonny" although I harbor serious doubts about that name and I have not the faintest glimmer of an idea what his last name might be, but he was one hell of an ironworker), and the ball looks larger as a result of that, but it's still a pretty substantial object, in and of itself. Maybe go back to some of the previous images and look at that headache ball again. From any kind of distance at all, it appears as this small, inconsequential thing. It is not.

Please note, the absurd angle at which the jib line is coming up and away from that headache ball.

Any time you see a line which is suspending a load, at any kind of off-vertical angle, you're seeing the application of invisible forces, and the heaver the object being lifted is, and the greater the deflection from vertical that the line is oriented in, the greater the invisible forces.

Right now, if for some mysterious reason, that jib line was to be released from carrying its load, the load, the bridge beam, would suddenly recenter itself in accordance with whatever else is holding it up and/or pulling it to the side, and it would just go right on through everything in its way as it did so. TREMENDOUS forces are at play here, and you can't see any of it.

Sonny has his left hand (And, while we're at it here, take a close look at Sonny's face. Get a good look at that expression. This man is in an astoundingly dangerous position, and his life hangs in the balance. He is trusting the other ironworkers in this work gang, but he is also on top of that shit, and his awareness and readiness to instantaneously deal with things if need be is dialed up to the maximum.) on a rope that extends from one of the "ears" on the bridge beam to the left of him, across, behind the headache ball, and out of frame on the right. This is a one-inch nylon rope which has a minimum breaking strength of over 20,000 pounds, and it's stretched as tight as a violin string. Serious forces are being transmitted through this rope from wherever it's tied off out of frame to the right, across to the bridge beam, and it's clearly keeping the bridge beam from going somewhere, and somewhere unpleasant at that, and it had fucking better not let go, and Sonny is on that shit, making sure it's right.

Wade Ivey, as usual, and as will remain until the last bit of this work is done, is nearby, lower left in this image, looking intently at what's going on, evaluating, absorbing, and providing help. He's the owner of Ivey Steel, but he's also an ex-ironworker himself, and as far as any casual glance at these kinds of operations goes, he may as well be just another ironworker in the gang, working with and for his team just like everybody else. This is the mark of a good leader. A good leader leads by doing, and knows the grittiest details of what's being done as well or better than anyone who's out there, hands-on, doing it. Does your boss do that kind of thing? Because if your boss does not do that kind of thing and does not know the gritty details of what's being done, then your boss is a fuckwit. And, alas, the sad truth of the matter is that most bosses are fuckwits who would never dream of getting the soft pasty skin of their own hands dirty, and who therefore are not, and never will be, leaders.

Also, we're getting a pretty good look down into the right-side end (with respect to the orbiter, with respect to the PCR, with respect to the whole RSS) of the PGHM bridge beam that will be transferring static and dynamic loads from the PGHM itself down into and through the load-bearing elements of the RSS, all the way to the ground. Stout. This fucking thing is stout.


Top LEFT: (Full-size)

Stepping off. Take note of the other two ironworkers as they watch Sonny in the initial split-second of his move over to the bridge beam, across a drop that would break too many bones to think about, or, more likely, kill him outright. They're right on that shit with him. These guys take care of each other. It's second nature to them. And they don't fuck up.

Nobody is tied off. And this is for a good reason, and it also drove the Safety Guy half nuts with anger and fear. The problem consists in the fact that the safety guy is almost never someone with any sensible experience in this sort of stuff. Instead, the safety guy reads it straight out of the OSHA book, and attempts to lay down those dictums, verbatim, without regard to..... well..... anything, really. The poor guy doesn't know, and as if that's not bad enough, he also has to report to somebody and if anybody gets hurt, and it gets determined that some fucked-up rule or regulation in the OSHA book was broken, then all hell is going to break loose, for all parties concerned. Except the lawyers, of course. You can smell the fucking lawyers in that book, and they smell like shit. Also, no handrail. All of the perimeter handrail on the fifth level of the PCR Interior Platforms has been very sensibly removed, to make enough room to twist and turn the bridge beam into place up above everything. Some of the handrail farther down is missing too. Take note of where Wade is standing in the top-right image. Yeah. No handrail there, either. Clearly, the safety man has been distracted, elsewhere, and is not watching any of this. And, for all I know, he may not have needed any distracting, either. Might have been a case of "The less I know about it, the better." Sometimes those guys would work with you, and when they did, there were certain considerations to keep in mind. Nothing's easy. Nothing's straightforward.

Ironworkers are not about to go and do something stupid. These guys know what's up. And lots of times, the business of dragging a rope and harness around, clipping in and clipping out as you maneuver across the steel, turns out to be more dangerous than simply forgoing this sort of bullshit and getting where you need to be without entanglements. Once you're there, ok, go ahead and clip in. But not now. Not while we're trying to get somewhere.

Once upon a time, at Pad 41, we had the Martin Marietta safety guy literally tell us that, when walking across steel beams, we needed to be tied to ourselves. As in, throw the safety rope down below the iron that people were walking on, and then bring it back up on the other side, clipping to the other side of the harness. Now stop, and think about that for a minute. Think of people walking around with loops of rope dangling below them around the steel beams they're walking on, like they're playing jump-rope or something. Nobody would get ten feet before that fucking rope snagged up on something, throwing the guy off the beam and wrenching his back, or worse, and we had a major whoop-de-do getting those idiots to come off of their fantasy-world "safety" directives, and let people move where they needed to move to, unencumbered by a deadly snarl of brain-dead bullshit, as they did so. True story. I was right in the middle of it. In the end, they relented, but only just. Grudgingly. In a pissy mood over it. The idiots.

So yeah, ironworkers do dangerous stuff, and they do it all the time. But you're the new guy here, and how 'bout you shut the fuck up and leave everybody alone, and let them do what they already know is best?

Up at the top of the frame, things are going on.

Notice that little patch of white, partially blocked by the horizontal angle-iron brace on the bridge beam. Look close, and you'll see a line going through it. So now we know exactly what's going on with the line that went up from the head sheaves on the little stub boom on that second crane that we saw on the pad deck a couple of pages back. They cut a hole in the back wall of the PCR, and just ran the line right on inside to whatever snatch block or other rigging they needed to get that line where they needed it. This typifies ironworker thinking. Solid walls count for little with ironworkers, who will just go right through them if and when they need to.

Also, the nylon sling from the jib line on the Manitowoc is nowhere to be seen. So the Manitowoc is finally gone for good. Things are becoming somewhat less radical, but they're still not "business as usual," not by a long shot. Also, you can see that the nylon sling has been replaced with a common wire-rope sling wrapped around that angle-iron and attached to a shackle which is now, much more securely, holding things together.

And while we're at it here, Fuck You, KSC-STD-C-0001, and all the pointy-headed assholes who attempt to enforce you on Good Men, against their vastly better judgment. Looks like the paint job on that fucking piece of lily-white angle-iron is going to get, shudder, SCRATCHED. Call the police! Call the FBI! Off with their heads! And I can just see those engineering and QC Paint Fucks reacting to things at this exact level of hysteria. But it's late. And those fucks are lazy. And stupid, too. And the ironworkers know it. And they know those guys are home watching something stupid on the television by now, and so they're perfectly comfortable moving back on to the solid ground of the real world, and throwing a proper wire-rope sling around that sonofabitch, like there should have been from the very beginning.

The beam twists and turns as it rises higher and higher. Loads are applied, varied, removed, and relocated to do this. The one-inch nylon rope that Sonny's left hand was on in the previous image now hangs slack. The dynamic is palpable.

And the work goes on, into the night.


Bottom Left: (Full-size)

And now, finally, at long last, the goddamned motherfucking PGHM Bridge Beam is closing in on its final position, and we're closing in on completing this phenomenal dance of heavy iron, the like of which you will never see, and never ever get anywhere near, in your entire life. Which, is probably a good thing. Good for you. Good for the ironworkers. Everybody wins.

I'm up on the top of the PCR interior platforms on the right-hand side, looking straight directly across the width of the PCR toward the left-hand side.

Get a look at that bogie, or, perhaps more accurately, trolley, up there, resting on the rail that will be carrying the full load of the bridge beam, the rest of the PGHM, and whatever the PGHM is itself carrying. Heavy iron. You can see a couple of "ears" hanging down from the trolley, one behind the other, with holes in them, and now you know where the ears on the bridge beam, with their own sets of holes, will be going. Look at the top of that trolley and notice just how close it is to the underside of the PCR ceiling, more than just a little bit of which has been cut the hell out of the way to let this work get done. I'm guessing there might be a couple of places up above parts of that thing where you could not even fit the flat of your hand, fingers out, into. It's close up there. Really really close up there, and I can just imagine the fun everyone had getting that thing into place.

Get a look at the iron that supports the rail the bogie is resting on. Heavy iron. Ain't going nowhere. Just they way they like it.

The load block has now finally pulled the main body of the bridge beam up near the elevation of the highest platform set inside the PCR, level 5, the removable handrails on that platform remain out of their sockets and stacked up somewhere, somewhere out of the way, somewhere safe, and now at last, the bridge beam can start to be maneuvered around horizontally, toward its final orientation and location. The load block is also noticeably off-vertical as it hangs from wire ropes. Forces. Invisible forces. It's been a long grueling haul to get to this place, but we're finally nearing the end of this lift.


Bottom Right: (Full-size)

And we've finally come to the last image in this series, but not quite to the finish point of the lift. It's late. I'd already taken the twenty something mile drive to the nearest Kentucky Fried Chicken and come back with buckets and buckets of the stuff, and everybody had eaten their fill, and now it's around 11:30pm, and we'd started bright and early at 7:00am, and I'd never been worth a fuck the entire time aside from taking these pictures and passing out the eats, and Wade very kindly sent me home shortly after this frame was taken.

The bridge beam is damn nearly in place now.

Over on the far side of the PCR, almost out of the frame up on the right side, you can see that the holes in the ears on the trolley are only a couple of feet away from the corresponding holes in the ears on the bridge beam, and Wade is still going strong, stooped over in order to see something on the far side, below the bottom of the bridge beam.

It's getting late. It's cold. I'm tired. Even though I haven't done a lick of honest work all day. I think I'm going to go home now. It's been a pretty long day.