Body Wrap

Canon EOS 5D

ƒ/13

105 mm

1/800

400

Up until the night before launch, the huge left section of the pad hugs the shuttle with various access scaffolding. Here you see it rolled back around a vertical pivot (an interesting retrofit from the Apollo Saturn V launches). You can also see the escape zip-line off the left top section of the pad.

And below, you can see my shot of Pad 39A in action.

7 responses to “Body Wrap”

jurvetson

Jul 14, 2008 at 5:06 pm

The STS-118 launch

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TomOwen

Jul 14, 2008 at 5:38 pm

At rest, the angle on that Zip-Line looks daunting… Thanks for sharing, Tom

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NYCArthur

Jul 14, 2008 at 6:10 pm

Spectacularly interesting image !!

thanks for this

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r o s e n d a h l

Jul 14, 2008 at 11:20 pm

Nice!
We just finished watching the Discovery Channel series "The NASA Missions: When We Left Earth." Fantastic show. I have a whole renewed respect for all those guys.

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AGrinberg

Jul 15, 2008 at 3:30 am

Fascinating shot. I half expect your next photo to be from the ISS !

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brian Braun

Jul 15, 2008 at 5:02 am

reminds me of a scene from Robot Jox!

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jurvetson

Jul 15, 2008 at 5:23 pm

@tom: They have to practice the escape, and it’s quite the ride, prioritized for exit speed…

@rosendahl: Yeah, it was incredibly brave to strap in there. As an amateur rocketeer, I often wonder how they did it… So many risks compounded…. even the subtle stuff, like the reliance on a global network of astronomers to spot solar flares in time to get the warning up… and all with onboard computing power less powerful than a Furby…

I recently had the great honor to be able to interview Neil and Buzz; the most interesting nugget was Neil’s nightmare scenario before launch.

@agrinberg: Next stop, ISS… but of course…

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Body Wrap

7 responses to “Body Wrap”

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