First, the coolest thing was walking under the Mobile Launch Platform (MLP). I have a couple pics looking into the flame trench and also up through the MLP at the shuttle. The whole thing stands on 8 little dinky looking pillars, but i guess that's all it needs. The MLPs used for shuttle launches are the same ones used for the Apollo missions. Here's some pics:
Flame Trench/Deflector
Looking up the flame hole
Straight on view of flame trench and MLP (2 storey structure on bottom)I bet some people are confused as to what that giant wall of gray metal is. well the Pad is made of 2 parts, the Fixed Support structure (FSS) and the Rotating Support Structure (RSS). The RSS is usually opened, and when the shuttle stack rolls in the RSS closes on t
he shuttle to protect it.
he shuttle to protect it.
You can see how on the left the RSS is open, on the right it's closed.
After gawking at the size of the structure, we got in the elevator and poked around. One of the most unnerving things was a walkway around the front of the RSS: the floor was grated so you could see straight down 150 floors. Here's a pic i took looking at the crawler and another looking down at some people working:
Oh yeah, there was the shuttle too:
Looking down the walkway for the crewOn the way out, we had a photo-op with the crawler, so here are some of those pics
Side view from the street
Front view
Greasy gear closeup
Side view from the street
Front view
Greasy gear closeupTwo other cool things I saw, first is a picture one of the emergency escape baskets (I'm totally volunteering to test these out).
And the last thing is this craaaaaaaaazy weld joint:
The second shuttle stack (Endeavour) is going to roll out to Pad B soon. When its out there, it'll be photo op city because there haven't been shuttles on both pads with the RSS open in a loooong time. I dunno if i'm going to get up early, but i'll definitely find pics to post!
The second shuttle stack (Endeavour) is going to roll out to Pad B soon. When its out there, it'll be photo op city because there haven't been shuttles on both pads with the RSS open in a loooong time. I dunno if i'm going to get up early, but i'll definitely find pics to post!
