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| About to bolt out of the stable. |
As the STS 132 stack moved away from us we could for the first time clearly see the ingeneous arrangement devised to transport first the Apollo-Saturn and now Shuttle stacks to the launch pad.
Running on four sets of caterpillar tracks was the crawler transporter, 40 m long and 35 m wide. Mounted on this apparently low slung vehicle was the enormous grey squat box-like mobile launch platform. It was on this platform that the two white solid rocket boosters sat, each held down by four explosive bolts. The organge external tank was supported by these two rockets. The tank, in its turn, carried the Atlantis, connected at three points.
Unseen from our vantage point, huge hydrogen and oxygen pipes passed from the fuel tank into the belly of the Atlantis to feed its three thirsty main engines during ascent to orbit.
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| Into the night air. |
Eventually Atlantis was at the door, then, at 11:45 pm, through it. Outside, search lights were illuminating the far side, although our side was in relative darkness.
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| Strong xenon lights illuminate the crawling stack, as Building workers ponder a job well done. |
This afforded an opportunity, that I seized, to get some photogenic silhouette effect photos.
Once the stack had crawled further out of the building, at 12:06 am, powerful lamps were shone onto our side of the shuttle, which now seemed to glow orange and white against the dark of the night beyond.
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Text, images and audio Copyright to Andrew Rennnie, 2010