October 9-10, 1976: A Weekend in Tampa, Florida
	October 1-3, 1976: A Visit to My Sister's House in Elon, NC
	Return to Index for 1976

Leaving my Mom in Charlotte, I continued on down to Florida for the class that Tony and I were going to do for Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida.

Harris Corporation is an American technology company, defense contractor and information technology services provider that produces wireless equipment, tactical radios, electronic systems, night vision equipment and both terrestrial and spaceborne antennas for use in the government, defense and commercial sectors. They specialize in surveillance solutions, microwave weaponry, and electronic warfare. Even given all that, Cullinane took them on as an IDMS Client.

Harris Corporation is one of those large companies that no one outside the defense establishment, ever hears about. Certainly I had never heard of them, but then I would never have had a use for their products. But anyway, the company, which had just recently moved its headquarters down to Melbourne, has hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, and is one of the top 100 defense contractors and one of the largest employers in Brevard County, Florida.

Tony and I had planned ahead and arrived a day early, specifically so we could take a side trip to the Kennedy Space Center about 25 miles up the coast from Melbourne.

The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center) is one of ten National Aeronautics and Space Administration field centers. Since December 1968, Kennedy Space Center has been NASA's primary launch center for human spaceflight. Launch operations for the Apollo and Skylab programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC.

Though the first Apollo flights, and all Project Mercury and Project Gemini flights took off from the nearby Canaveral Air Force Station, the launches were managed by KSC and its previous organization, the Launch Operations Directorate. Starting with the fourth Gemini mission, the NASA launch control center in Florida (Mercury Control Center, later the Launch Control Center) began handing off control of the vehicle to the Mission Control Center shortly after liftoff; in prior missions it held control throughout the entire mission.

Most of us boomers have followed the progress of every manned launch carried out from the various launch pads here. People of my age remember Alan Shepard and John Glenn; both of their groundbreaking missions began here. And I recall vividly following the progress of Apollo 11, and was a Class B Agent at Camp AP Hill in Virginia on that evening in July, 1969, when I and a few other fellow officers watched with rapt attention as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon for the first time. All that, and the missions that followed, began here, and are still ongoing.

Tony was as interested in all this as I was, and so we drove up here and signed up for a tour. We hoped to see a lot, but the tour didn't go inside very many of the buildings. Among the facilities we hoped to see were the 525-foot tall Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking NASA's largest rockets, the Launch Control Center, which conducts space launches at KSC, and the Operations and Checkout Building, which houses the astronauts dormitories and suit-up area.

The Vehicle (originally Vertical) Assembly Building, or VAB, is the large building at the Kennedy Space Center, designed to assemble the large pre-manufactured space vehicle components, such as the massive Saturn V; and stack them vertically onto the Mobile Launch Platform and crawler transporter.

At 129,428,000 cubic feet it is one of the largest buildings in the world by volume. The building is at Launch Complex 39 and is also the largest single-story building in the world, was the tallest building (526 feet) in Florida until 1974, and is still the tallest building in the United States outside an urban area.

The VAB, which was completed in 1966, was originally built to allow for the vertical assembly of the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo program and referred to as the Vertical Assembly Building. In anticipation of post-Saturn projects such as the Space Shuttle program, it was renamed the Vehicle Assembly Building in 1965, and will be used for the shuttle's external fuel tanks and flight hardware, and to mate the Space Shuttle orbiters to their solid rocket boosters and external fuel tanks. Once assembled, the complete Space Shuttle will be moved on the Mobile Launcher Platform and Crawler-Transporter to LC-39 Pad A or B.

In my picture of the VAB, you'll note the American Flag painted on the side of the building. This was added early this year for the United States Bicentennial, and the bicentennial "star logo" was added as well.

At right is a picture of Launch Pad A, part of Launch Complex 39. It was from this launch pad that most of the Apollo missions were sent up.

Launch Complex 39 was originally built for the Saturn V, the largest and most powerful operational launch vehicle in history, for the Apollo manned Moon landing program. Since the end of the Apollo program in 1972, LC-39 has been used to launch every NASA human space flight, including Skylab (1973), and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (1975).

Since December 1968, all launch operations have been conducted from launch pads A and B at LC-39. Both pads are on the ocean, 3 miles east of the VAB. From 1969 to 1972, LC-39 was the departure point for all six Apollo manned Moon landing missions using the Saturn V, and is supposed to be used for all Space Shuttle launches.

Human missions to the Moon required the large three-stage Saturn V rocket, which was 363 feet tall and 33 feet in diameter. At KSC, Launch Complex 39 was built on Merritt Island to accommodate the new rocket. Construction of the $800 million project began in November 1962. LC-39 pads A and B were completed by October 1965 (planned Pads C, D and E were canceled), the VAB was completed in June 1965, and the infrastructure by late 1966.

I took this picture of the Launch Complex 39 press site simply because I had seen it on television when launches occurred. At those times, the bleachers were full of VIPs and reporters, and the ground all around covered with cameramen and their equipment.

If you have seen the movie Apollo 13 or the recent documentary Apollo 11, you will also see the press site (although it is only the real site in the documentary; for Apollo 13, a duplicate was built for the filming and to intersperse with stock footage of the actual launch.

Part of our tour was on a shuttle that took us around the launch complex, and we got a good deal closer to the VAB about an hour into our tour.

In the picture at right, you can see again the Vehicle Assembly Building. That framework tower to the right is actually part of the Mobile Launch Platform 1 (the "crawler").

In 1963, NASA contracted the Morrison-Knudsen company to design and build the VAB. Construction began with driving the first steel foundation piles on Aug. 2, 1963. It was part of NASA's massive effort to send astronauts to the Moon for the Apollo Program. Altogether, 4,225 pilings were driven down 164 feet to bedrock with a foundation consisting of 30,000 cubic yards of concrete. Construction of the VAB required 98,590 tons of steel. The building was completed in 1966. Located on Florida's Atlantic coast, the building had to be constructed to withstand hurricanes and tropical storms- hence the massive foundation.

There are four entries to the bays located inside the building, which are the four largest doors in the world. Each door is 456 feet high, has 7 vertical panels and 4 horizontal panels, and takes 45 minutes to completely open or close. The north entry that leads to the transfer aisle is going to be widened by 40 feet to allow entry of the shuttle orbiter.

To lift the components of the Space Transportation System, the VAB housed five overhead bridge cranes, including two capable of lifting 325 tons, and 136 other lifting devices. The building has at least 40 MW of air conditioning equipment, including 125 ventilators[2] on the roof supported by four large air handlers (four cylindrical structures west of the building) to keep moisture under control. Air in the building can be completely replaced every hour. The interior volume of the building is so vast that it has its own weather, including rain clouds that form below the ceiling on very humid days, which the moisture reduction systems are designed to minimize.

At left is a closer view (through a chain link fence) of the Mobile Launch Platform 1 (the "crawler"). It takes the entire rocket assembly and tower from the VAB out to whichever of the launch pads is going to be used.

Below is one of the many outdoor exhibits here- this one of a Saturn rocket assembly. The Saturn V (pronounced "Saturn five") was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA between 1967 and 1973. The three-stage liquid-propellant super heavy-lift launch vehicle was developed to support the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon and was later used to launch Skylab, the first American space station.

As of today (2019), the Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful (highest total impulse) rocket ever brought to operational status, and holds records for the heaviest payload launched and largest payload capacity to low Earth orbit of 310,000 pounds, which included the third stage and unburned propellant needed to send the Apollo Command/Service Module and Lunar Module to the Moon.

At right is the interior of one of the buildings that our tour did go into- the firing room in the Launch Control Center that is attached to the VAB. There was one exhbit that was movie, filmed in this room, showing what happens during an actual launch. They have all the consoles synchronized with mechanical people to simulate the actual activity.

Below is one section of the crawlerway. It is a wide stretch of concrete that leads to the pads. The crawler carries a fully-assembled launch vehicle to the pad at about 10000 feet per hour.

Our tour lasted for about two-and-a-half hours, and both of us enjoyed it immensely.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	October 9-10, 1976: A Weekend in Tampa, Florida
	October 1-3, 1976: A Visit to My Sister's House in Elon, NC
	Return to Index for 1976