The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Page 49: An End of a Beginning and a Beginning of an End.
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I already know it is impossible to describe the ambiance of this image, and the one below it at the bottom of this page, but I'm going to try, anyway.
And so we find ourselves looking at the opening scene at the premier of Lord of the Rings Meets Blade Runner.
A great Redoubt.
A great gloom-shrouded Keep.
Set atop a high rampart, towering above the wilderness lands all around, surveying and controlling all that lies within its gaze.
Hewn of strongest steel as if by a race of giants, a colossal and unknowable thing to defend and birth the fires of a Great Dragon which flew upon thunder, above the highest clouds to a killing place with no air, where the stars shine against a black velvet sky at noon.
Which it called home.
And yeah, spend enough time out here, and you'll start talking funny, too.
And the one thing this image most completely fails to convey, is the size of the thing, the scope of the thing when viewed from the moderate distance of a quarter mile.
In this image, you see a dark shape sprinkled with white specks.
"That's nice."
And you cannot imagine.
It loomed in the darkness above you. It glowered down upon you. You felt it more than saw it.
It was possessed of a great dark power that emanated out from its center, holding everything all around it tightly in its grip.
If it were a mere two-dimensional mural it would take a building forty-stories high by two-hundred stories wide, and even then, it would be a flat lifeless thing with no depth.
Pad B had depth, and that depth held secrets, and as you came upon it in the thick and palpable gloom when stars still shown in the dark and dimly-blueing sky, you could feel this motherfucker.
And as I said, I already know it is impossible to describe the ambiance.
But I tried anyway.
And I tried to take a picture of it.
And these pitiful images are all you'll ever get, which means you'll never get anything at all.
And the contract closes. And the job closes. And a time is over, done with, and gone-by. And the future crowds in on it, shoves it roughly aside, and replaces it all with itself become now.
There will come a First Launch.
And that which flies first will be named "Challenger."
And it will come to pass beneath the cold sun of January 28, 1986.
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