I'll go on a little trip to explore KSC or the air force base during lunch, or down time. My first one is kind of a drive-by look at the VAB (vehicle assembly building), launch Pad A and the Crawler.
Here's the VAB:
The VAB is the largest 1 story building in the world. It is 525 feet tall, 716 feet long and 518 feet wide. Each of the stars on the American Flag painted on the building is 6 feet across, the blue field is the size of a regulation basketball court and the whole flag is as long as a football field. It is able to withstand hurricanes, but Hurricane Frances blew off some panels (top picture, left of the flag). The rocks seen in the left pic are on the "Crawlerway", and they are special rocks that were selected due to their compression propertiesThe crawler is what gets to ride on the "Crawlerway". Here it is:
The Crawler weighs 6 million pounds (each tread weighs about 1 ton). The crawler's max speed is 1 mile per hour and burns 150 gallons per mile. The distance from the VAB to a pad is about 3.5 miles, which at today's gas prices is about $2100. Takes about 5 hours to go to the pad.Next stop: Pad A. This pad is where the Atlantis will blast off from (so says the security guard). Couldn't get right up on it (even though i have authorization) because I didn't have a hard hat. Check it:
Finally, got to see the can. This thing will drive all the payloads to the pad. It will get lifted vertically in that big gray structure and all the payloads will get pushed into the Orbiter (space shuttle) cargo bay.
Check back tomorrow for the next Lunch Trip: Complex 34, Where Saturn 1 and 1B were launched from!
