The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Page 15: Outside the Sheffield Steel Field Trailer, Let's Take a Break.
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Those of us who have stayed with it to this point, and who have applied themselves to understanding what's actually going on out here as we build ourselves a launch pad, are by now well-enough acquainted with the jaw-dropping complexity and overall difficulty of the work.
And you've only scratched the surface. You have seen far less than the mere tip of the iceberg.
And yet, just the tiny little bit that you've been through (and I'm only talking to those in the group who have not only clicked every link, but who have then further put in the time and effort to actually understand what they're being shown in every link) should be more than plenty enough to give an idea, no matter how faint, of just how intense and unforgiving the actual work was.
People who have never done this sort of work can never appreciate the insane level of difficulty and the high-stakes pressure involved in getting it right.
This is not a place where you can "fake it till you make it," and if you so much as even try that kind of bullshit out here, you're in for some big surprises.
And a world of hurt to go along with them.
You don't bullshit structural steel.
You don't bullshit the Space Shuttle.
You don't bullshit the people who make it happen.
Get it wrong, get a consequence. Cause and effect.
The simplicity of the concept is heartbreakingly brutal.
This is not a place where you can just sort of slap at shit with the least shred of hope that you might ever somehow be able to get through it without knowing what the fuck you're doing.
When you don't know, you make damn good and sure to let everybody know that you don't know, and then you stand back, and you watch and you listen, and you read, and you bear down on yourself with every grain of effort that you have, and you hope thereby to learn.
And at all times you must accurately and honestly assess yourself, and you keep very close track indeed of what you know, and what you don't know, and you never try to bullshit yourself or anybody else around you, because it's a team sport and every member of the team needs to be on top of that shit, or otherwise the rest of the team will take note, and then take measures, and they will expel the defective part.
The defective member of the team who fails, through dishonesty or bullshit or negligence or overreaching, to measure up, is expelled from the team.
Don't get me wrong, it's totally doable, but it's not doable under false pretenses, ok?
Put in the honest effort, reap the honest reward. More effort, more reward. Cause and effect. Brutally simple. Fail to put in the honest effort, get outta here, get lost, we don't have time to be putting up with your lies and bullshit.
"But you're just sitting there at a desk! You're not even doing anything. How hard can it be?"
You better goddamned well get it right, or otherwise the least of your worries will be finding a new job after you'd had your badge confiscated, got yourself escorted to the Main Gate, and were summarily kicked off the property.
Get it wrong, and you've just impacted the National Space Program. With severe consequences, quite possibly.
Get it wrong, and you've just damaged or destroyed a multi-million-dollar, possibly even multi-billion-dollar National Asset.
Get it wrong and you've just injured, maimed, or killed somebody. Or yourself.
High-stakes. It's a very high-stakes game we're playing.
Do. Not. Get. It. Wrong!
And going at it too hard, for too long, can be just as dangerous as trying to bullshit your way though it. Both are Pathways to Mistakes, and mistakes... well... let's just not make any if we can avoid it, ok? Let's just keep that end of it to the barest of bare minimums, ok?
So... every once in a while.
Take a break. Decompress. Breathe a little.
You've earned it.
And in the photograph above, you're seeing Eugene Hajdaj (pronounced "Hay Jay") during a much lighter moment, enjoying a bit of warmth from the sun on a cold and windy winter morning, striking a humorously-resolute pose at the top of the stair, in front of the door that gave entrance into my end of the Sheffield Steel field trailer at Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. My boss, Richard Walls, occupied the office in the far end of the trailer, and had his own door and small stair, which can be seen beyond Gene in this image, but which he hardly ever used, it being easier to use the main stair, and perhaps affording more opportunities to keep an eye on his answering machine, too..
And how am I ever going to deal with Gene Hajdaj?
I've already tried, but dammit, I know I'm not getting it done. So even though I'm not getting it done, I'm not done.
Trying.
This one is never going to come out right.
Gene was an engineer, and was one of the very first proper engineers I ever interacted with in my life, and he taught me a tremendous amount about how the design and construction of things like launch pads is actually done. How the engineering is actually done.
His kind forbearance with an answering machine (that's ME, remember), knew no bounds.
Gene too, as did so many others out on the Pad, saw my interest, saw my enthusiasm, saw my desire to learn, and was as happy as anyone could ever be to further me along on this strange new path my life had unexpectedly taken.
Hajdaj worked for Reynolds, Smith and Hills, and RS&H was the company that designed the whole shebang. The whole Pad. Look down at the title block, on any of the contract drawings that I have been linking to throughout these pages, and you will see, on every single one of them
REYNOLDS, SMITH AND HILLS
ARCHITECTS · ENGINEERS · PLANNERS
INCORPORATED
JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA
So Gene Hajdaj was the real deal.
He was a Real Guy.
Gigantic Construction Projects can, oftentimes, be broken down into three great groups, and those three groups are Structural, Mechanical, and Electrical.
We were structural people, and Gene Hajdaj was RS&H's structural field representative out at the Pad, and as a result we wound up doing a lot of work together.
And Sheffield's relationship as a contractor with one of the customer's representatives, was a good one (which is not always the case, and if it ever goes adversarial it can become unpleasant in a wide variety of ways, some of which can be quite unexpected), and there was a lot of back-and-forth dialogue between us, and for that reason, Gene and I wound up getting along together very well.
Gene was Good People, and I could go on and on and on about it, but I'm already overdoing it here, and I need to tone it back down some, but suffice it to say, Gene Hajdaj was one of the primary reasons I wound up going as far with things as I eventually did.
So..... yeah.
Behind Gene, in all of its construction-site rat-hole glory, the Sheffield Steel field trailer sits propped up on cinder blocks placed upon the sand, above the usual Florida weeds and sandspurs, at the edge of a low drainage swale, into which one of the runoff lead-ins coming in off of the asphalt surface of the parking lot can be seen, coming up into the frame from the bottom-right margin, headed into the darkness beneath the trailer.
At the foot of the stairs, a leftover piece of hot-dip galvanized steel-bar grating spans the low ditch which ran along the edge of the parking lot in this area. Plywood scraps complete the makeshift pathway between our automobiles and our offices.
Most of the flooring on both towers was steel-bar grating, and we furnished a lot of it, and in situations like that, you're always going to be finding an unwanted piece or two to grab and put to work elsewhere.
Welcome to my ever-so-humble work abode at The Pad.
And then I laughingly trade places with Gene, and he takes my camera, stands a little closer, and returns the favor, for better or worse.
This guy is looking over Wilhoit's field trailer, just out of view to the left, directly at the Fixed Service Structure and the Rotating Service Structure, both of which sit on top of the Pad Deck at Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and you can tell, just by looking at him that he still doesn't believe a single bit of where he is, what he's looking at, or how he ever managed to wind up here in the first place.
It's coming out of the pores of his skin.
And everybody could see it, plain as day.
And all these years later, he's still having trouble believing any of it actually happened.
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