Theme: Fire in a box

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Greetings. This is the full stack of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125 the last Hubble servicing mission) in the Vehicle Assemble Building (VAB). The orange External Tank is flanked by the two Solid Rocket Boosters (which once lit burn to completion). The bottom tail of the Atlantis Orbiter can be seen just below the External Tank. Note that the SS full stack only takes up about half the height of the VAB (for the Saturn V used for the Apollo missions tip had to be pivoted to the side to fit!). The blue panels at the top of the photo are part of the ceiling with three (something like) skylights. This is all sitting on the Mobile Launch Pad which is completely moved out to the launch pad 3 miles distant.

The photos were taken in 2008 (I processed the pano some time later and processed the color just today).



Handheld 8 shot stitched pano (ptGUI pano software), PS perspective correction (perspective warp I think), Topaz Simplify (cartoon for the edges and flattened out some of the detail), Topaz Adjust for the color.

This is all sitting on the Mobile Launch Pad which is completely moved out to the launch pad 3 miles distant.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Kerry Perkins]

Michael, great job on this impressive image! I love the vertical pano for this scene, it really gives the viewer a sense of the immensity of the shuttle and the building. Awesome! Many years ago I had the fortune to meet the man who designed the servo motors and control system for the MLP. What an achievement, as even the slightest error between the prime movers would be a disaster.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Well it looks pretty impressive. Very good for a hand-held pano. Hard to bet a sense of scale, but I imagine it's pretty big.

[Kerry Perkins]

Jackie, those solid rocket boosters are 150 feet tall!

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Well it looks pretty impressive. Very good for a hand-held pano. Hard to bet a sense of scale, but I imagine it's pretty big.

Yeah, it's hard to get perspective even when in the building. The top-most white platform around the External Tank is at the 19th floor level, while the building (if there were floors) would be over 50 stories high.

-Michael-

[Nancy Bell]

An impressive structure well portrayed! I like the design & intricate detail of all the vertical elements and the symmetrical look. Certainly makes the eye move up, up and away!

[Judy Howle]

Excellent job on stitching the pano, and the perspective looks good to me. Very impressive as everyone already said.

[Paul Lagasi]

How did you get so close to the boosters, the CS perspective correction really comes in handy for just this type of image, the detail captured is very nice, although conveying the actual size of these rockets is tough, you'd almost need a human standing on one of the platforms....thanks for sharing

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hey, Michael, great shot and great story. I've lived in Florida most of my life - about 2 hours from Cape Canaveral - and have never seen a launch or toured the facility. I can't fathom how tall this is. Thanks for sharing

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Kerry, Jackie, Nancy, Judy, Paul, Cheryl,

Thanks much for the comments. Much appreciated. Yeah, it's kinda like the Grand Canyon in that it is really hard to get a perspective of just how big (or deep) it is even while your standing there looking at it. Since this is a pretty wide (er, tall) fov there is a fair amount of size distortion. I can tell you that the white bracket at the bottom of the orange External Tank is at the 7th floor and the topmost white bracket is at the 19th floor, while the ceiling is at what would be the 50th floor. The bottom white conical part of the SRB, the visible part is maybe the height of a door (note the worst height distortion is in this part of the pano). I took these shots out by the edge of the Mobile Launch Pad (MLP), maybe 100 ft from the bottom of the SRBs.

These were taken during my one NASA space adventure (Er, I was on an assignment focused on the Launch Facilities at Kennedy Space Center. I normally work on the aeronautics side of NASA) in my almost 30 years of working at NASA. I was able to tour the VAB and see the Space Shuttle stack (from the 19th floor level, too), even walk around the bowels of the MLP. Easily the peak experience of my years at NASA.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Mark Fuge]

Great shot Michael. We were just there in February, when they had the final tours of launch pad 39-A prior to it's being dismantled for transfer to private industry for their use in their space program. I had been in the VAB many years ago. But later tours didn't go inside the building. I think our tour this time I was standing where you were for this picture, but I didn't have a shuttle there! ; >) We did view a lot of the shuttle launches though from the cruise dock area over the years. Sad to see that program end.

Again, great shot and great application, along with creating great memories of a great time in America's space program.

[Anita Bower]

Congratulations on third place win on this theme. What a treat to have been able to photograph this.