Back to the Pad

I was sitting at my desk Wednesday morning when the phone rang. It was a guy I know who works for the Space Station group.

"So what're you doing this afternoon?"
"Have a couple meetings, why?"
"I was going to head over to the pad..."
"Hmm. I might be able to get out of them. Let me check and call you back?"
"Okay, sure."

A few minutes later I called him back.

"Alright, they'll let me go."
"Cool, pick you up at 1?"
"Awesome."

I didn't have to look for my field trip with Myca this week. It found me. Pad 39-A it was.

There are a number of things out at the pad necessary to launch the shuttle, the most obvious being the metal structure that sits on top of it. This has two basic parts. The tall straight one is called the Fixed Service Structure, or FSS, and the shorter wide part is the Rotating Service Structure (RSS).

All of the platforms and pieces that attach to the shuttle are connected to the FSS. The two elevators in it only go to the 255 ft. level, but there are stairs we can take to get all the way to the top. The long white thing that sticks up is part of our Lightning Supression System. This is very important because KSC is in the lightning capital of the United States and if lighting strikes we don't want it to hit our vehicle. The last time this happened was when Atlantis flew for STS-115 in September 2006. Thankfully our lighting rod worked.

Photo: NASA

The RSS is the part we saw moving last week. It has platforms that let us do work on the orbiter and holds the Payload Changeout Room (PCR). "Payload" is the word we use for anything other than the vehicle or the astronauts that we are launching into space. It could be a satellite, a container of supplies or, like this mission, a piece of the International Space Station. (ISS).

Part of the PCR is what we call a cleanroom, which means we control the air and particles inside of it. I had to wear a bunny suit and stand in an air shower (a little room that blasted me with air to blow any dust away) before I could go in. Unfortunately they didn't have a bunny suit that could fit Myca, so she had to wait outside.

Photo: Jeremy P.

The payload going up in March is the S3/S4 truss segment. These are the pieces with solar panels that help power the space station. The panels are folded up inside the two long gold boxes. After the truss is attached to the space station they will come down 90 degrees to make a straight line with the circle in the middle and will then stretch out to unfold the panels. I recommend watching NASA TV on Flight Day 5; seeing it happen is better than any description I could give.

One of the things I love about going to the pad is the view. The day we went out was beautiful and you could see pad 39-B clearly against the blue sky.

I do not recommend a trip up there to anybody who doesn't like heights. Not only are you over 250ft. off the ground, but what you stand on is not solid. Every floor at the pad is more like walking on a giant sewer grate and you can see straight through to the ground. I am over 100 ft. higher than the cars in this picture, and what you can't see is the flame trench (big hole for the flames at launch) that I am directly over.

You can also look up and see any people at every level above you.

If there is one place everybody visiting the pad for the first time wants to peek at, it's the white room. This is where the astronauts get into the shuttle before launch. It's not very large, and is more like a box leaning against the shuttle that is connected to the pad by a long walkway.

At the same level as the white room we have slide wire baskets. If something goes wrong and the astronauts have to get away from the shuttle quickly they get in the baskets and fly down the wire to a place where they can be safe.



The best part of the visit came when I took Myca to see the white room for the first time. Here we are before going down the walkway:

Photo: Jeremy P.

There's not much to see in the white room other than the hole you crawl through to get into the shuttle. The only way to tell which vehicle you're looking into is the covering that says "Atlantis" on the open door. If I remember correctly the yellow tubing carries air into the orbiter. There's somebody in the white room at all times who controls who and what goes in and out of the vehicle. She said we could go up to the door and take a picture.

Photo: Jeremy P.

This is where it got interesting. One of the guys inside the shuttle poked his head out and asked if Myca was Flat Stanley. I told him it was something like that, but not quite; the the astronaut was getting a tour for my cousin up in New York. He then asked the woman monitoring the white room for permission to bring Myca and my camera inside. I was ecstatic. She was about to experience something many people working at the space center never get to.

This week Myca didn't just go inside her first space shuttle, she went into the one at the pad waiting to launch. And where did they take her picture? The seat Commander Rick Sturckow will sit in as his crew blasts off on the STS-117 mission. How cool is that?

Photo: 1st shift SCO, Feb-21-07

Thanks this week go to Jeremy for inviting me out and taking pictures, Mike and Matt for putting up with me being a tourist, Tony for his help with the basket pictures, Mike, Scott and Bob for letting me out of their meetings, and two wonderful people in the white room whose names I forgot to ask for in the middle of my excitement. This is going to be a hard week to top.