Photo Descriptions

Langley spacecraft structure testbed with cooler

This photo shows the interior of a large industrial room. In the foreground, several feet off the floor, is a large structure with a flat top and flat bottom. It's about 4 feet tall. It's hard to tell how long it is, because it stretches off the right hand end of the picture. A person standing on a ladder is working on part of the large structure.

You can Return Now or continue for the rest of the description.

The room is a large, industrial style room. It has a high ceiling -- perhaps 40 or 50 feet above the floor. The walls are painted white. In the background we can see pipes, beams, air ducts, walkways with railings, and other less identifiable equipment. The floor is grey. It is polished enough to show dim reflections.

The large object several feet off the floor is roughly rectangular. It seems to be about 4 or 5 feet tall, and maybe 8 or 10 feet wide. I can't tell how long it is, because it extends out past the edge of the photo. The long side of the object is covered with blankets of a shiny, gold-colored material.

We can't see the top, because it's too high. We can see some objects sticking up from the top. There's a rod sticking up from the top, maybe 8 or 10 feet tall. There's a round, white object at the top of the pole -- I think it's a dish radio antenna. It's maybe 3 or 4 feet in diameter. Also sticking up from the top are short pylons made of an open framework of gold-colored metal bars. The framework is made of framework cubes (about 1 foot on a side) stacked on top of each other. These cubes have bars outlining each square side of the cube plus bars along some of the diagonals.

The front end of the big object is partly covered by the gold blankets that cover the side. But most of the front is uncovered, revealing a framework of the same cubic framework that forms the pylons on top. A person stands on a ladder, his hands on some piece of apparatus attached to the bottom of the front surface of the large object.

Return to photo page

Cooler testing at Langley spacecraft structure testbed

This photo is in the same room as the previous photo. Two people are seated at a table in front of the large suspended object that was in the previous photo. The people are working with electronic equipment.

You can Return Now or continue reading.

In the right hand part of this photo, we see the end of the large object that was sitting several feet off the floor in the previous photo. In this photo, we're looking up at it, while in the last photo we were looking down at it. We can see the metal framework that I talked about in the previous photo.

In front of the large suspended object are 2 people sitting at a line of tables. The tables are nothing special -- metal legs painted white, dark tops (probably some sort of plastic.) The tables are piled with electronic euipment. An electric fan is perched atop the equipment..

The person in the foreground is leaning forward, adjusting a knob on a panel full of knobs. With his other hand, he is adjusting what seems to be an oscilloscope.

The person in the background is just sitting back and watching the little screens do their thing.

Return to photo page.