American Spaceport Nears Completion

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31085, 14 June 1966, Page 12

American Spaceport Nears Completion

Two of the greatest buildings of this century are nearing completion on opposite sides of the earth. They are a world apart in location and poles apart in design, construction and purpose.

One is a shrine of arts and its form is a poem in steel and concrete. The other is dedicated to science and exploration and is as functional as a can opener. Although they are as different as chalk from cheese they are equally aweinspiring. One is the new Sydney Opera House and the other is the Vertical Assembly Building for Saturn moonrockets at Cape Kennedy. The Vertical Assembly Building—-V.A.B. for short—is the heart of a futuristic spaceport which in barely three years has risen on the swamplands of the Florida coastline and in another three will be sending men to the moon. Early next year the first of the giant Saturn V rockets to be assembled inside the V.A.B. will blast off from a launch pad three miles away from the building. Even at that distance the deafening roar of its 4000-ton exhaust will bring problems never before encountered in the design of such a colossal building. The intense shock waves beating down from the rocket as it climbs into the sky would shatter conventional windows. Instead, translucent panels of heavily reinforced plastic have been used. This is typical of the problems that faced the combined

talents of Morrison-Knudsen, Perini and Hardeman, the prime contractors for this most expensive construction project in history. It has cost over 1000 million dollars. The Vertical Assembly Building is out-size in every respect. It stands 524 feet high and, like any 500-foot mountain on a flat landscape, it can be seen looming above the horizon more than 20 miles away. Because of its box-like shape and exposed location there is a very real possibility that it might be blown over by one of the destructive hurricanes which sometimes sweep across the Florida peninsula. Model tests in a wind tunnel confirmed the danger. For safety it was decided to anchor the whole building to bedrock with 4000 steel pilings. These were driven 150 feet into the ground and sealed in with 30,000 cubic yards of concrete. Assembled Upright

The cavernous interior of the Vertical Assembly Building connects four bays in which the Saturn moon rockets are assembled in an upright position. Each rocket sits on a mobile launch pad which serves as its launch platform and umbilical tower. The whole assembly stands over 40 storeys high and as the rocket stages are mated, semi-circular work platforms three and four| storeys high are slid snugly up to the rocket, holding it firmly in place. This arrangement allows technicians to have easy access to the rocket at many levels. When the rocket has been double-checked and run through a simulated countdown, the whole assembly—rocket and launch tower together—will be transferred from the interior of the V.A.B. to one of the two new firing pads close to the Atlantic shore. It will be carried on top of a mammoth crawler transporter which will move along a concrete runway as broad as an eight-lane highway. The eight crawler tracks will be powered by two diesel engines each of 5500 horsepower while the steering, levelling and jacking systems require two further 2750 horsepower diesel generators. The crawler-transporter has posed engineering problems bordering on the insoluble. On one of its test runs the roller-bearings in the track supports were crushed by the sheer weight of its load. Replacement by sleeve bearings seems to be successful. The automatic system for keeping the load level has not yet worked correctly but its problems are near solution. Giant Pads

The launch pads are twice the size of any yet built. Each is in the shape of an octagon over half a mile in diameter. In the centre is a steel and

concrete ramp and pedestal bisected by a deep flame trench. The pad is built to support 9000 tons and withstand the tremendous blast of the rocket exhaust The exhaust is channelled away by a steel flame deflector which alone weighs 300 tons. Seven miles from the Vertical Assembly Building is the spaceport’s industrial area where all of the supporting operations and initial tests are conducted. At this moment the first flight model of a complete Apollo spacecraft is under test before its transfer to the V.A.B. Among the 50-odd buildings in the industrial area are facilities such as vacuum chambers big enough to test the largest spacecraft, balances for weighing spacecraft to the last ounce and instrumentation for checking every detail of spacecraft operation. The whole spaceport occupies an area of 80,000 acres serviced by 100 miles of roads, 22 miles of railway track and a canal and dock for the barges which transport the Saturn V first stages from Louisiana to Cape Kennedy.

A work force of 10,000 is needed just to keep the spaceport in operation: near the time of an important launching there will be several thousands more. Visitors in the spaceport find it overwhelming and can never hope to see the full scope of its activities. But they can appreciate that the exporation of the moon calls for an effort far greater than that of any previous expedition in the history of mankind. The Soviet Union must also possess a spaceport of comparable size. Their techniques for assembling and transporting moon-rockets may be quite different but they are the only nation with sufficient resources to reach for the moon. And after the moon, what then? Already the Americans are discussing the pros and cons of sending vehicles of the Apollo type to visit Mars and there will always be requirements closer to home, such as the establishment and maintnance of space stations. The usefulness of the new spaceport will not be limited by lack of opportunities for spaceflight; rather it will become obsolete as soon as space rockets can be made to take off like aircraft from runways—a prospect that might not be far away.