Mike had the opportunity to attend
the Rocket Test Facility Operators Working Group (RTFOWG) conference at the
RTFOWG was renamed “Rocket Test
Group” (RTG) at this conference since the common pronunciation had been “Rat
Fog”.
The presentations were given in the
Space Life Science building on base. The conference room was at the top of
those large windows behind the flags. The windows look north toward the
assembly building and the launch pads. Mike’s manager Fernando, and the CTS
facilities manager Jerry, were along as observers. His DA&C presentation
went very well.
After the presentations, our host
took us on a once-in-a-lifetime tour of KSC. Above is
1 of the 4 pairs of tracks on the crawler. Each steel pad weighs over a ton. I
picked up sample Tennessee river-rocks for the kids. These hard white rocks are
trucked in from
Here is the conference group photo
taken by our host. Mike is on the far left. The crawler is almost twice as far
from the camera as the people.
Our tour bus parked outside this
building for over half an hour waiting for clearance to go in. Everyone had
already been thoroughly vetted and assigned temporary NASA employee badges.
Security guards were heavily armed.
Before we got off
the bus, we were told no to touch any flight hardware and not to use the flash
on our cameras. Employees were performing delicate functions and could be
distracted.
We entered doors at the end of a
tunnel and proceeded under low-hanging steel supports. Space Shuttle Atlantis
was directly above us.
The Orbiter Preparation Facility is
where shuttles are inspected and repaired. Between 150 and 250 tiles are
replaced between missions. Multi-colored tags were sticking out all over the
underside indicating necessary action. The picture above is the corner of a
hatch where the shuttle mounts to the liquid oxygen tank at liftoff. There is a
16” pipe fitting just inside to supply the 3 main engines. The green paint is
on the thin aluminum skin. These are some of the thinnest tiles on the shuttle.
Sorry about the blur. No flash pictures allowed.
Here is a technician preparing a hole
near the front landing gear hatch for one of the 20,000 unique tiles. These are
some of the thicker tiles. The aluminum padded foot to the left is holding the
pilot-side landing gear hatch closed.
The open hatch above Mike covers the
landing gear on the shot-gun side.
We were allowed to go anywhere on the
floor level for over 40 minutes. That was an incredible experience.
We passed the tourist observation
tower a mile before reaching launch pad 39B. This is a wide angle lens shot. I
wondered if Walter Cronkite had ever gotten this close. The concrete channel in
the picture is huge. During a launch, tons of water per second is sprayed into
this area to keep the pad from melting. The heavy fence 300’ behind me looked
like my old BBQ grill; the one that had to be thrown away.
This shot was taken from the same
location without the wide angle.
This final group photo was taken with
the
The temporary NASA employee badges
got us into the visitor’s center for free and even worked for discounts in the
gift shop.