re: Pictures from days gone by....

OK, here's a cool photo - wish it were mine, but it is not. Taken from a pair of F-22's doing air restriction patrols at a shuttle launch.



But I will give you a couple of launch shots that I *did* take. The first one was taken from the causeway about 4-5 miles away from the launch pad. The funny story there is that I had my family with me - wife and two middle school boys at the time. I had seen several shuttle launches but they had not. After I got this shot, I picked up my other camera and turned around to take a photo of my family - they all were staring straight up with their heads tilted back and mouths open, just like three baby birds. :- ) I actually have a shot from one of the causeway viewpoints where I captured the boosters separating on a very clear day.



Final launch shot - this one was taken in Nov 2008 at about 8 pm or so, it had just turned dark. The launch pad was about 2-1/2 miles away and I was standing by the Vehicle Assembly Bldg, on top of the old Apollo era countdown clock pad elevated about 5 feet up from the normal terrain (now it is gone). Even at that distance, when the bird went up, my pants legs were whipping around from the force of the wind and sound. Amazing experience. The light artifacts on the photo were ghosting from inside my camera lens (a middling quality 300mm/F4 Tokina at the time).



If y'all want to see a few more in my NASA series I'd be glad to post them with some interesting background (at least to me).

OK, this always fascinated me. If you look in the jet photo posted above, you can see the roads leading to the 39A39B launch pads for the shuttle. If you look closely, you can even see that they are twin tracks.

The shuttle assembly (tank, boosters, shuttle) are put together in the Vehicle Assembly building and it is all put together in place on top of a tracked vehicle called the mobile launch platform. Here's a photo of it from the side:



And a closeup shot of the track. Each of the four corners that has a track has it's own 300 hp diesel engine that carries the MLP and shuttle assembly out to the launch pad at a whopping 1-1/2 mph... but to be fair, the shuttle assembly weighs over 8 million lbs.



But what you probably don't get is the sheer scale and size of this moble launch platform.



Now, here's the fascinating thing to me... take a close look:



The shuttle on the MLP weighs so much that the road tracks to the launch pads can't support the weigh with asphalt/tarmac. And crushed limestone fractures too much under the weight also. So what you see here is twin tracks of QUARTZ ROUND RIVER ROCK. You probably picked up some as a kid for your rock collection. But being round, this type of gravel is exceptionally hard and basically non-compressible. It does eventually fracture, though, and they can make 9 fully loaded trips on it before the gravel has to be replaced. If they have to pull the shuttle back to the VAB from the launch pad, that's two trips.

These twin tracks are appx 10' wide x 2, and bedding and packed at about 18-24" deep. One path is 2-1/2 miles long and the other is appx 4 miles long. That's a LOT of special gravel, just think of how MUCH gravel it takes! Here's the kicker... every bit of it is barged in from the Missouri river down the Mississippi and through the intracoastal waterway. Once it has to be replaced, the old gravel is dumped in the Atlantic to form an artificial reef. The sheer volume and cost of that specific type of gravel and where it comes from is incredible.. but that's what they had to do.

Spent 5 years working on those tanks at Michoud in the early 80s.

Always thought it was cool that i actually walked on something that went into space

Ava Gardner's MGM employment photograph from the year 1942 at age 19.

Fine as wine -

Artists' Excursion On The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 1858

1920s Dog sled mail train in Anchorage, Alaska

So my serial stalker/DVer is still on the job