But the bare bones of it are what give it character. It’s not designed to impress. It’s designed to perform what it needs to.

We have a library, here in headquarters, which mostly has just records and building codes and the sort. However, there is a small architecture section and one book in particular focuses on industrial buildings, in which there’s a really nice two-page spread on the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB.)

There are, of course, other buildings on Center, but the VAB is decidedly the most recognizable due to its size. It’s the 4^th largest building in the world by volume, 525’ high and a footprint roughly 700’ by 500’. So let’s be honest, it’s a GIGANTIC box. It would literally develop its own weather in the interior because of its size before they implemented climate control measures.

From an industrial standpoint, the VAB is a marvel, 4 huge bays designed to hold 4 separate rockets and the transfer isle between them. There are platforms rising up in the high bays to construct the massive rockets and cranes to hoist the different components into place. Like many of the buildings here on Center, well for the most part like any government industrial building constructed in the sixties and seventies, structurally it was designed to withstand a nuclear blast. The sheer scope of it knocks you on your feet when you’re inside because you look up and it swallows the entirety of your perception. I couldn’t take a good picture while I was there in order to capture the idea of the size that the VAB is, but I found the picture to the right from the NASA archives which hints strongly at what I’m talking about. The base of the shuttle where the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) meet the mobile launcher (ML) is still about thirty feet in the air, and if you look closely at one of the platforms you can see workers in order to scale it in your mind. And then you think about it, the Shuttle fully stacked is only about 180 feet tall (Haha, only,) the Saturn V was 363 feet, and the proposed Ares V is going to be 380. Yikes! This is a MASSIVE structure that works and manipulates these delicate (and just as massive) vehicles.

And all of this is fantastic.

But…

Architecturally, the VAB doesn’t dress itself up nice and pretty. Strip off the few instances of decorated siding (The meatball and the flag) and you’re left with, like I said, a box (granted, a very cool box.) And really I’m just reiterating a long discussed argument in architecture, but I feel it’s one to address while on this co-op because I’m working so closely with industrial buildings. As designers, we need to think about form versus function, but also budgets, schedule, current conditions, the historic registry, construction practices, building codes, and ultimately, what does the user want in this structure? We need to, as thoughtful architects, to consider above all else what the user needs.

The VAB doesn’t need decorative cornices and odd angles. We needed a place we can stack rockets safely, and that’s exactly what the architect and structural engineer designed.

Growing up here in Florida has allowed me to really feel like I am in the heart of space travel, like I am a part of something bigger than myself as we speed towards new horizons and into the final frontier. I can’t tell you how many times I have sat on my driveway, looking up at the heavens, and watched a space shuttle, or a rocket, or some other project NASA was working on take-off into the heavens. It is engrained in my childhood, from the launch to the sonic BOOM as the Shuttle comes home.

One time in particular is one of my most unforgettable and surreal memories. As I’ve said, Kennedy is a part of everyone in Brevard County, so it is not uncommon for the world to stop around us as we watch one of the launches. Launch and landing always take priority even over prime time on our local news. We wait and watch, our television screens tuned into Local 6 or whatever, until about one minute left before we all run outside to watch with our own eyes.

It was a nice winter day, not too cold, and my middle school had scheduled a fire drill, therefore all of us gathered out on the soccer and baseball fields waiting for the all clear. When the fire drill was officially “over” the administration held us out there longer than normal, directing us all north and telling us to keep our eyes open.

Watching a shuttle launch is something everyone should experience in person. (Ten… Nine… Eight…) Even though the pad is so far away you imagine feeling the earth rumble in your bones (Seven… Six…) and the roar tickling your eardrums as the clock counts down. (Five… Four…) Back at my school, a quiet settled over the fields as we grew restless with the familiar anticipation and flutter of butterflies in our stomachs. (Three… Two… One…)

(We have lift off…)

We watched the streak of white fire cut across the crystal clear blue sky, leaving a billowing cloud of orange and purple in its wake. We watched as the solid rocket boosters disengaged from the rest of the shuttle and fell away.

All of us watched it until there was nothing except a pinpoint glitter in the sky.

And then it disappeared.

Standing on that field surrounded by fellow classmates and administration, I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “This is awesome.” Not awesome as in cool, or wicked, but truly in the purest sense of the word awe-some.

This memory has stayed with me for years, and I pray I never forget it. The space program is majestic for those who play direct or in-direct parts, and even to casual observers. But this program is not without risk. In the case of this launch, I hadn’t known at the time that I would never see Space Shuttle Columbia take-off again. The investigation into the disaster concluded that an insulating foam tile had fallen off the external tank during launch and struck the orbiter’s wing, dooming the vessel before she even made it into space. Sixteen days later, she disintegrated over Texas, taking with her the lives of seven astronauts.

As I sit at my cubical, dreaming about the stars and thinking about cantilevers to make sure my canopy doesn’t collapse on the cars underneath it, I’m also thinking about the fact that I need to get this right. Not just that it looks pretty, or drawn well in AutoCAD, but how I can make it my own aesthetically, while still firmly founded in reality.

If there’s one thing that this co-op really brings home to me from a designer standpoint, it is affirmation of the responsibility for architects and engineers. Structures deserve every effort by the designer in order to be a safe facility for its inhabitants and the assets residing in them. While NASA is an extreme example of this, the structures in and around Kennedy are dedicated to space exploration and all structures simply need to work. While it was not the fault of our facilities, the freak accident that cost the program Columbia is a reminder that what we do affects lives, whether it be a malfunctioning light socket, or awkward stairs, or even a loose tile.

It’s hard being away from friends and school for so long. I took this co-op back home so I’d be closer to my parents, no room or board costs, etc, but unfortunately few of my Florida friends (they’re at college) or Boston friends (they’re in, duh, Boston) are here to socialize with.

So I need creative ways to entertain myself here in Mel-boring. Any and all books I can get my hands on. Obsessive amounts of Supernatural. Video games. Driving 3 hours to Tampa to visit my brother then 3 hours back. Orlando. Facebook, lots of facebook. DeviantART, Fanfiction.net, Twitter, etc.

But even these get dull after a while. My way to deal with this, in a backwards way, was one weekend I decided to watch a couple of movies with Gary Sinise. In particular some of my favorite movies of all time, like The Stand, and Apollo 13.

It was awesome. But I think I would have enjoyed it more if I were in Boston.

See I have a perpetual and really unfounded anxiety when it comes to actively socializing. I don’t like it. I don’t like talking, preferring to listen and soak up the stories of other people’s lives and problems. If I want to talk I prefer it in writing ie a blog. But I’m working on my lack of people skills through this co-op, and it’s something that I didn’t think I could being so far away from friends and classmates. I’ve been reconnecting with old high school friends that aren’t in Tampa, Tallahassee, or Gainesville. Meeting with other co-ops here at KSC and even video-conferences with those around the country from Ames, Glenn, Dreyden, Goddard, Johnson and more. Even just talking and the occasional lunch with the senior engineers is a fascinating look into how things have changed at KSC.

The point is you need to put yourself out there even on co-op, and share those boring Saturday nights with the people you meet. Professionals call it networking. Spice it up by watching Apollo 13 and playing the six-degrees of Kevin Bacon game. (Hint, he’s already in the movie.)

So, in honor of the Atlantis flight on the 16^th, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Shuttle.

Designed in the early seventies, the Space Shuttle is made up of three parts. First is the Orbiter. Being the iconic portion that holds the crew and cargo it is commonly referred to as the “shuttle” itself. The important thing about the Orbiter is its large payload capability and that it is able to actually land like a plane would.

Attached to the orbiter is second part, and it is the orange external tank. Originally this part was painted white just as the rest of the Shuttle, but it became a non-issue as the paint did nothing for the Shuttle except add weight and therefore in the future it was left unpainted. This tank holds the liquid propulsion necessary for the launch.

In addition to the external, there are also the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB,) one on each side of the external tank. These hold solid propulsion and are expelled from the external tank and orbiter about two minutes after takeoff. They fall into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida to be processed and reused for a later mission.

All in all there have been six Orbiters. Enterprise was the test vehicle, and never made it to space. The first flight-worthy orbiter, Columbia, was constructed in 1979 and her first mission was in April 1981. In subsequent years, her sister ships Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis would join the fleet down at KSC. Following the Challenger tragedy in 1986, Endeavor was commissioned and had her first flight in 1992.

Sadly, the Shuttle is going to retire in 2010, and many of us here in Brevard County are really uncertain about our near future and the lengthy gap between the last Shuttle mission and hopefully Constellation. Nevertheless, Shuttle has been an important tool for science in the past few decades, bringing us Skylab and most notably the International Space Station which has already come into its own for discovery.

That being said, I was researching one of my current projects when I came across an aerial view of what we call “Launch Complex 39.” This area of KSC is primarily all the buildings that service and store the Shuttle and the rockets, such as the VAB, LCC, OPF 1, 2, and 3, and the RPSF. Around these buildings, and the others on site, were rather large yellow circles radiating around each. They seemed to have no real rhyme or reason. They intersected, overlapped, what have you, and I didn’t know what they could mean. When I asked what the importance of these circles was, I got the coolest answer ever. Apparently, what I failed to pick up on when inspecting the diagram initially was that no other buildings would fall within the radius of another.

This space between buildings is called Quantity Distance (QD) and it’s vitally important to site planning at KSC. Whenever a new structure is needed, engineers and architects and the environmental division look at the restrictions that present structures create in order to safely site the new project.

You see all the buildings at KSC handle delicate equipment. And most of this delicate equipment has, in one way or another, rocket fuel. So if something goes terribly wrong and malfunctions, causing an explosion in one of the structures, it will safely fail so that the explosion couldn’t potentially lead to a chain reaction.

How cool is that?!

But ignoring of my own time management problems, we had the ARES 1-X launch on October 28th.

I can’t describe in words the sheer depth of amazing our new rocket was. It was history unfolding before my eyes. And the whole thing was an experience, waking up at 4am to drive to Kennedy, anxiously hearing Mission Control and Launch Services set times and then scrub and then the new time and dealing with clouds and weather and cargo ships in the landing zone and scrubbing until the next day and then more weather concerns and then the heart thumping anxiety of seeing this massive behemoth waiting on the launch pad.

And all of a sudden we get the green light and things move at light-speed. Services GO. Controls GO. Weather GO. Ranged GO. The all-mighty countdown clock withers away from 4 minutes. T-minus 90… 60… 30… 16… and the crowd stands up and the air is electric with excitement all around. We all count down together down from 10…

3.

2.

1.

Enough of my rambling. I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves how AWESOME it was to watch this girl take-off.

It’s like. Wow. This is something I can tell my kids or grandkids that I saw the launch of the Ares when she was first tested. The rocket I might be able to say that took us to the Moon. To Mars. I’ve always envied the stories from Brevard County natives and tales of “I watched Apollo 10 take off.” Or “I was there to see the Mercury launches.” “Right there, live, on television I watched that first step on the Moon.”

We can’t take the history around us for granted. Years from now we’ll tell our own kids “I remember the Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004 after 86 years. It was awesome. We didn’t have math homework that whole month of playoffs.” “I was in 8^th grade, Miss Carroll’s class when the World Trade Center fell. Dad checked me out of school.” “I watched Michael Phelps win 8 gold medals in the 2008 Bejing Olympics.”

I saw the first launch of Ares. And she was beautiful.

Or, Environmental Protection its Related Effects on Construction.

Should a manatee be seen within100 yards of the construction site or construction vessels, all appropriate precautions to ensure the protection of the manatee(s) shall be implemented. Should a manatee be seen within 50 feet of operating equipment, the operating equipment shall be shut down immediately. Operation of the equipment shall not resume until the manatee(s) has departed the construction site of its own volition.

When writing construction contracts, every little detail must be spelled out to avoid legal troubles. A breach in contract means lawyers get involved and no one wants that (except maybe the lawyer, but I’d imagine even he’d rather be out golfing.) And one of the BIG rules for contractors is to abide by the rules laid out by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.)

KSC is located on the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, so long story short we have a lot of rules and regulations related to construction of facilities and the native Florida landscape. From the Atlantis Ocean to the Indian River Lagoon, we host a variety of plants and animals, many of whom are considered endangered or threatened. We do our best to not disturb the native habitat, the wildlife is a fickle group of animals, and sometimes come in contact with our sites. We try to figure out what issues will arise prior to construction using Environmental Assessments (EAs) and studies. Then determine the rules in place like the one above to protect the wildlife best we can during construction phases of projects.

However, you can never know if a gopher tortoise is going to wander onto the construction site. When this happens, the lovely group of environmentalists downstairs would love for us to stop construction, make a little information placard and leave it be. More often than not though, a Florida Scrub Jay is not going to stand in the way of progress! And more paperwork must be completed.

According to our own environmental studies, we have over 1000 species of plants, over 200 species of animals, not including 330 avian species. The usual suspects to interrupt construction here on Center are manatees, alligators, sand hill cranes, gopher tortoises, scrub jays, sea turtles, bears, panthers, and bald eagles. Looking at it is like a laundry list of things that can kill you. Literally on my way into work this morning I saw THREE alligators. One of which had to have been at least ten feet long, and boy was he fat.

Now I’m not begrudging God’s beautiful flora and fauna, nor our commitment to environmental protection, but seriously, they can’t have these problems on urban sites…

Most of what I’ve been working with is decisions by dollar signs. Cost estimates. TNs. Contracts. Options. Alternatives. The other day I was cataloguing doors and I needed to find out how much for maintenance and installation and materials, much of which will dictate the choices the user will make.

So I’m sitting here drafting this entry, instead of actual work, because we’re only just starting to work out what we’ve got happening this fiscal year. It’s an eye-opening look into actual practice. Granted, much of this could be due to the fact we’re a government run program and a private architectural firm may be different, but it’s interesting nevertheless. We’re missing so much by not accounting for money constraints in design and I don’t think we can get that experience in anyway besides on co-op.

LCROSS stands for “Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.” What the mission boils down to is that we’re trying to find water on the moon, crashing the Centaur spacecraft in order to see the dust and debris from impact, monitoring it to see if any ice kicked up evaporates when exposed to the sunlight.

Oh, and shout-out to my Dad! His company, Northrop Grumman, helped once more with reaching the moon (you might remember their “small” contribution in designing the Apollo Lunar Module.)

That’s one of the coolest things about working for NASA, so many companies, engineering firms, architecture firms, technology contractors, all of them work in one way or another to build up our nation’s space program. If any of you ever take a co-op down here, who knows? You may find yourself helping to design a launch pad or an assembly building.

Here at Kennedy we threw a viewing in the mission briefing room, with front row seats as the Centaur plummeted towards the lunar surface before it ultimately crashed. Keep tabs on this folks, in a few months we may come back saying “Oh, just btw… water. on. the. moon.”

I went with some of our civil engineers last week to go visit Launch Pad 39B, taking with us some contractors bidding on the proposed modifications in preparation for Constellation and the Ares series. (Particularly the Ares I-X at the end of October) Actually, the term “some” contractors is laughable, because we had well over one hundred visiting personal on the pad on the two occasions I went.

So, donning my hardhat, and armed with only my camera and security badge, my basic job was to tell people I couldn’t tell them anything in regards to the project. This was totally fine with me, because while I am something of a space-geek I don’t know where that wire goes and no I wouldn’t tell you if I did. Giving them information is against the spirit of process, as they’re bidding on the work if I give one contractor information that the others didn’t have, he or she would have an unfair advantage.

But beyond that, I mean, it was the launch pad! Really cool stuff goes down there, or should I say up there? Regardless, the pad is something awesome. It is raw structure, built of steel and concrete, and designed to withstand the impressive forces of a rocket launch. There are two main parts to the pad, the fixed structure and the rotating structure. As you can probably tell, one is fixed whereas the other rotates to accommodate the Shuttle/Rocket being launched. Both times I was sent to patrol the top level of the fixed structure, and if you think about it that’s really really high, this structure services rockets, some well over two hundred fifty feet tall. No time to be afraid of heights.

From the pad you can see for miles. From the top of the pad I could get an unprecedented view of the complex, the VAB, the other launch pads, 39A and the commercial ones… I could see the cruise ships down at Cape Canaveral, and the towers in Cocoa and the open expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. When I get the chance, I will post pictures from the trip.

Looking back at my time there, I didn’t appreciate the history at the time. That structure is routinely flooded with both water and fire, exposed to lightning and hurricane winds as well as the corrosive hungry ocean. The launch pads are the literal thresholds between earth and space. It absolutely blows my mind.