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Building on the MOL's graveyard also forced some curious adjustments. One example: a concrete box filled with dirt had been constructed as a protective blast wall for the orbiting-lab project. Nicknamed the Flower Pot, the box sat directly in the path of the guy wires that a shuttle crew would have to slide down during an emergency evacuation of their craft. To prevent any astronauts from slamming into the now useless structure in the future, the Air Force plans to rip down one corner of the Flower Pot.
Other existing facilities have undergone modifications. The Vandenberg runway was only 8,000 ft. long and paved with asphalt. To make it shuttleworthy, the runway was stretched to 15,000 ft. and paved with concrete. Noting that NASA shuttle facilities at Cape Canaveral were also adapted from earlier, more primitive structures, Colonel Yager declares: "We are both victims of prior history."
If the new shuttle installation has one flaw, it is the inconvenient, 16-mile distance between its landing strip and its launch site. The separation was unavoidable because the blast-off station had to be at seaside, but there was no way to shoehorn a landing runway into the area, which is rimmed on three sides by the Santa Ynez mountains. As a result, a returning orbiter, after its arrival at the runway in the northern part of the Vandenberg base, must be loaded aboard a 76-wheel trailer and towed at a poky 3 to 4 m.p.h. to the launch pad.
To prepare for a launch, technicians at Slick Six will literally put things in motion, that is, move some of the buildings on the site. Three of the eight gigantic structures are mobile. They can be driven under their own power along railroad-style tracks to meet at the launch pad. The first of these traveling skyscrapers is the 27-story-high, 8,000-ton service tower. Moving at a maximum speed of 40 ft. per minute, it travels about 450 ft. to the pad from its customary vantage spot and is locked into place. A 200-ton-capacity crane in the tower's protruding roof then lifts six solid-fuel rocket booster segments from the bed of the rubber-wheeled transporter and sets them on the launch mount. Initial testing of the tower was Jiampered by glitches. Recalls Georg O'Gorman, supervising engineer at the site and unofficial mayor of Slick Six: "There is always a lot of sandblasting going on, and someone missed a few particles. It's like the old wives' tale about the locomotive that couldn't start moving because of a penny under its wheel. The sand did pretty much the same to the tower."
The system now operates with monotonous smoothness. Says Colonel Yager: "From inside you don't even know you're moving. The operator just sits there with his little joy stick. In fact, we're considering a change in the procedure to provide him with a television. It won't change the way the building moves, but it would enhance his perception."