The Construction of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39-B
A very personal and technical written and photographic history, by James MacLaren.
Page 71: Orbiter Access Arm, Prelift Work in Flame Trench.
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And now we'll do the Orbiter Access Arm. The OAA. Which is what it was invariably referred to at all times, out on the Pad.
Here it is on 79K24048 sheet M-326 in general arrangement isometric view, with the RSS in its mated position (with part of the RCS Room, which it crammed in underneath, with less than inches of room to spare, shown in cutaway view, or otherwise you can't even see the business end of the OAA).
And once again, as ever, with 79K24048, you get this great big F-size drawing, and the miserable fucks fill the whole thing up with white space, crabbing the item of interest down to a laughably-reduced size, causing it to render with a truly-crummy lack of detail, and ya know, sometimes it occurs to me that somewhere in a PRC/BRPH back room someplace, there was a guy, and this guy's job was to measure lines.
Because, at some point, back in those Pleistocene sticks-and-rocks days before computerized drafting took over, when people still labored diligently at the board making all this stuff by hand with pencils on paper, (and I was among the very last of those whose lives intersected with this Lost World personally), and the cost to produce an individual line became the same, be it an inch long or a hundred miles long, the fucked-up metrics people (who, do not get me wrong, are vitally important in the business world, but who also tend to get put in positions they've got no proper justification for being in), exercised their snipsnipsnip cost-cutting ways, and when they wind up where they don't belong, stupid things invariably result, that not only fail to save the corporation sensible money, but actually cost money, because other divisions of that same corporation wind up spending more money, more than ever got "saved", filling in the voids created by the snipsnipsnip cost-cutting metrics idiots, farther down the road, with significant and substantial work (direct, indirect, legal, younameit) that would never have had to be done, if only the original engineering was half worth a shit. Sigh.
And if you doubt these words of mine, maybe go have yourself a nice close look at the story of the Boeing Corporation, or maybe the General Electric Corporation before them, or any number of other outfits that got well and truly fucked over by their own executive "leadership," to find out what happens when the moneyguys completely lose sight of what the goddamned company is supposed to be doing in the first place.
Boeing, in particular, is a laughably-egregious example of this very thing, except that it's not laughable at all, because people get killed before the place goes bankrupt, even as the Golden Parachutes flutter softly to the ground from High Places, and as I write these words, right now, fucked-up Boeing has left a pair of astronauts stranded in space, because their goddamned worthless fucking Starliner space capsule (which I've talked about before, and which was bad then, and remains bad now) was deemed unfit by NASA (who is the customer, and who pays the money for the product) to bring them back home safely following their very first crewed flight test of the damnable thing.
And I'd bet good money that somewhere along the way, some genius in the PRC/BRPH Metrics World went the extra mile and actually produced a ledger sheet demonstrating how they had managed to derive the cost, per running inch of made-by-hand pencil line on paper, for every line on every drawing the place had ever made in all of its existence. And then they proudly showed the results of their going the extra mile to somebody up above, who promptly issued an outraged edict, and the result of that edict was that all lines, on all drawings, thenceforth, got... shortened, and the only way to do a thing like that is to draw everything smaller, and...
Ya know, I'll bet that's exactly what happened, among all the other crimes and insults that 79K24048 is so very-well endowed with.
Which means that somewhere, there was a guy, and our Somewhere Guy's job was to measure lines, and woe unto those whose lot in life it was, to receive attention from... Line Guy.
Buncha goddamned fucking bullshit is what it is, and it's all it will ever be. Avaricious Idiots In Charge. What a great idea! Let's do it now!
Feh.
Ok, where were we?
Oh yeah, the Lift.
This is not the last substantial Lift that we're going to have photographs of, but it's the last Arm that got lifted. After this was hung, there were no more arms. OMBUU, GOX, IAA, OAA, and that's it, that's all you get.
And what you're seeing in the image above these words, is the work that had to be done on it, prior to it getting hung on the tower, and when you look at the image, you'll see that the Environmental Chamber, the White Room which the flight crew gets their final preps in, prior to crawling through the hatch into the Vehicle, has not yet been attached to the end of the Arm.
This particular image is not properly a part of the Lift, so I've broken it out out into its own separate Page, kind of like what I did with a couple of the IAA Lift photographs.
And you're seeing the OAA in the photograph, down in the bottom of the Flame Trench, north of the Flame Deflector, because that was an excellent place for doing the pre-Lift work that had to be completed ahead of time, but not too far ahead of time. Same deal exactly as with the GOX Arm.
And as with the GOX Arm, it had a Hinge Positioning Template to properly align the Hinges, plumb, square, and true, so as the Hinge Connection Plates, and all the bolt-holes in them, would exactly match the corresponding set of Bolt Holes in the OAA Strongback, and we met the GOX Arm Hinge Positioning Template back on Page 66 via my marked-up version of 79K24048 sheet M-351, and we're gonna get a look at the OAA's version of this drawing, a few more paragraphs down the page, ok? The Strongback for the OAA had been put on the FSS by Wilhoit, way back in 1979, or maybe even 1978, well before I ever first laid eyes on the place.
So. With the Strongback having been put on the tower literal years before, the only thing they had left that was adjustable, to make sure it was all properly aligned, was the OAA itself, and in our photograph above, you can see them doing exactly that, and you may further verify the Strongback as having long-since been hung on the FSS by looking at a marked-up version of Image 003, which you first saw back on Page 4, and which is the FIRST photograph I took out there, on the sly, before I ever had a camera permit, standing in the parking lot next to the Sheffield Steel field trailer.
And unlike the IAA, which we just saw getting bolted-up on Page 69, the allowances for typical ironworker "beatin and bangin" to brute-force reluctant things into submission, putting them where they belong whether they want to go there or not, are quite a bit more stringent with our OAA, so we're really gonna have to be damn good and sure about it, before we Lift it, because once it's up there, we're gonna have NASA QC breathing down our necks, and they're going to be more than just a little bit disinclined to let us go at it with torches and main force, to get the miserable fucking thing to go.
Additionally, the Orbiter Access Arm itself was significantly different from the GOX Arm (and all of the other Arms on the original LUT from whence it came), in multiple differing ways, and the OAA Hinges themselves, were distinct from all the rest of the Hinges, with a distinct and very different outward appearance, and for that reason, the alignment and temporary support hardware which was required to lift the Arm into place, was completely different.
79K24048 sheet M-195 (just as bad, maybe even worse, for visualizing this as it's 79K24048 GOX Arm counterpart, M-351, which you were just shown) gives us a sort of a look at things. Sort of. Open those two drawings up, side by side, flip back and forth between them, and it immediately becomes clear that the both of them very likely originated from the same drawing table, rendered by the same put-upon individual who was not given nearly enough time to do the rendering properly, and who was also most likely cowering in fear of some management operative or other, who was constantly glowering down upon them, never happy with anything they did, and constantly urging them to work, "Faster, faster!" every miserable workday of their tenure at the Two-Headed Monster, PRC/BRPH, over-hastily putting 79K24048 together on the fly.
And as also with the GOX Arm, and the Intertank Access Arm, alas, I do not have a set of proper drawings for the OAA.
79K24048 hung it on the tower, but did not fabricate it, so we'll just have to do without, unless and until that set of drawings somehow falls out of the sky directly into my lap, as has so much else with me telling this tale.
I appear to be some kind of magnet for stuff like that, but unfortunately, I'm not the very best magnet, and not everything gets picked up by our not-the-very-best magnet.
We'll start with the very-best 79K24048 overview drawing I've got for the OAA, and it's not the most wonderful thing in all the world, but for the purposes of referring back and forth with Image 129 above these words, it's at least a starting point. Of sorts. We did actually use this drawing, to hang the Arm, so it can't be that bad, can it? Hmm... maybe don't ask, ok? Leave well enough alone.
So here's 79K24048 sheet M-327, bare, except for the standard rectification work required to get all the subject-matter (as opposed to things like the border or title block) of the drawing as reasonably square and true as I could, without resorting to outright fabrications, be they manual, or be they AI. And I guess I may as well take this moment to advise you that AI (artificial intelligence) is NEVER going to be allowed to raise its ugly head around anything you see which has my own name on it. That shit's gonna get out of hand, and it's gonna happen faster, and worse, than anybody can imagine, and not only do I want no part of it, it's also not in keeping with the spirit of this stuff, which was all done by hand, originally, and so it shall remain, today. And tomorrow, too. And of course I drop that little tidbit into the narrative today, October 11, 2024, by way of leaving a few signposts along the way here and there as I write this thing, telling the story of telling the story, to give context for those future people who might need it.
Above and beyond the White Room not being on the end of the Arm in our photograph, there are other differences, and for that, we might want to look at extracts from the old Apollo drawings for the LUT Swing Arms on Drawing Package 79K30000, which was created in the early 1980's for the demolition of the last LUT, and see what they reused from Original Apollo Equipment, to create their nice new Space Shuttle Orbiter Access Arm.
So here's a rectified (but otherwise bare) 79K30000 sheet 62, (which we glanced at, back on Page 66, but no more than that) Demolition And Stripping Of Mobile Launcher No. 1 (ML-1), Command Module Service Arm, and you take one look at this thing, and then look back at 79K24048 sheet M-327, and it just jumps right out at you, as to where our Orbiter Access Arm actually came from, although it (they) were not this Arm, and instead were taken down back when Wilhoit was attacking the first two LUTS, creating Fixed Service Structures on Pads A and B out of them.
And now we can turn our attention back to Image 129, give it a nice close look, and maybe learn a few interesting things about what's going on, while we do.
The Hinge Positioning Template which we met a few paragraphs back via a link to 79K24048 sheet M-195 is an interesting item, and we're holding in our hands the only photograph of this thing we'll ever encounter, so ok, so let's highlight it on Image 129 with a nice label so as you can see it with ease.
And then, now that we know exactly what we're looking at, we can zoom in on Image 129, down in its lower left corner, and see what was going on that fateful day when MacLaren (whose head and shoulders shadow is visible left of center, down near the lower margin of the photograph) made his camera go "click" once again, out at the Launch Pad.
And I'll never be able to tell you who they are, or what they're doing, but whatever it is, they were not fucking around with it, and they were taking their time and getting it right, and I would imagine them to be a pair of ironworkers, giving that Lower Hinge sitting there in the Positioning Template, a good goddamned CLOSE looking-at with a tape-measure, and here they are labeled, in a close-up crop of Image 129 for you to see and wonder about for yourself.
The Hinge Bracing Hardware, which shows on my marked-up copy of M-195 in orange, and which I linked you to a few paragraphs ago, can also be seen in our photograph, but I'm not going to even attempt to mark that stuff up to make it more visible in Image 129, because it's not shown well, and there's also a near-impenetrable snarl of other crap all over the place partially/mostly blocking it from view, in addition to a guy who's literally standing on it, working inside of the Pivot Frame down on the Lower Hinge Box, and... you get to work that one out for yourself, and the very best of luck to you in doing so. If you like solving puzzles, then you'll love picking this stuff out from its surroundings in the photograph.
Elsewhere in Image 129, a close look at the comb-like nozzles of the SSW Spray Header high above the bottom of the Flame Trench on its west wall, reveals them to have all been blanked-off with welded-on rectangles of steel. We discussed this modification work earlier, which became necessary as a result of nearly losing STS-1 because of SRB Ignition Overpressure, and aside from simply pointing it out, there is no need for further elaboration or discussion about it.
There is much else of interest in our photograph, but we have by now (those who have read through all of it to this point, anyway) entered that realm in which we're pretty damn conversant in the subject of That Which Shows Up In Our Photographs, and we are all now beginning to transition from students to teachers, and I can close this page here and now, comfortable in the knowledge that you're able to identify what you see quite well, on your own.
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