Word: slick
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Under construction since 1979 and now nearly four-fifths complete, the Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex (SLC 6),* dubbed "Slick Six," is a prodigious arrangement of lofty mobile towers and gaping tunnels, rugged bunkers and squat tanks, covering 150 acres...
...March 1985, when Slick Six is expected to be finished, some 250,000 cu. yds. of concrete will have been placed. The estimated cost of construction: $570 million. That, however, represents just a fraction of the budget. Equipping the center with the latest computers and gadgetry will run another $2 billion. But size and expense are not what makes Slick Six unique. Says Air Force Colonel Walter Yager, commander of the Shuttle Activation Task Force: "There have been larger and more expensive projects, but I doubt if there have been any more complicated...
...Force, which will operate Slick Six, plans to fly up to ten missions annually. Another point in Vandenberg's favor: shuttles will be launched due south and will fly over Antarctica as well as vast stretches of water, regions where the craft's solid-fuel rocket boosters and external tank can be safely jettisoned...
...launch pad when it was months away from completion. After the shuttle launch complex was approved and funded, the Air Force figured that it could save $100 million to $300 million by converting the MOL site rather than building from scratch. In fact, the most imposing structure at Slick Six, the 285-ft.-high Mobile Service Tower, is a refitted and slightly shortened version of a MOL facility. The Air Force also cannibalized the steel used in that structure, constructing an access tower for astronauts entering the shuttle...
...called for a tolerance limit of as much as ¼ in. in fitting the orbiter to the tank. NASA said no, setting the maximum permissible degree of variation at a minuscule ³¹/iooo³¹∕¹ººº in. "With the wind and the weather at Slick Six, we knew we could never get it down to that," says Major Ronald L. Peck, Vandenberg's chief of public affairs. "So they went back to the drawing boards and came up with the Shuttle Assembly Building. We call it our $40 million one-sixteenth of an inch...