Ed , welcome to the board. It is nice to see another host here, you are in great company. As someone said, you tell great stories.

I can only imagine the stories you will never be able to tell.

I look forward to future posts from you.
Anthony

Ed, thanks so much for posting. I enjoyed the crawler segment enormously. Please post more things as you think of them, and hang around a while. It's always nice to hear from you guys.

Loved the coffee cup story.

Hi Ed -

Thanks so much for posting these "behind the scenes" anecdotes. It's really neat to hear from someone on the ground.

When I first saw the episode, the "one small scoop" remark made me laugh right out loud.

Best of luck with your strike - I hope that things work out for you and your colleagues. You are doing important work and, thanks to your participation in this show, now the whole country appreciates the (dirty) work that you do!

Thanks again,
Betsy

Hi Ed! So happy you have joined us here on the DJMB
Your segment was very interesting, as are your posts here. Look forward to hearing from you again soon. Take care!

You know this will sound nuts but that drinking out of the cup from the garbage business is stuck in my head-yucky!
Ed- what was the reaction to this from you and the other staff? Did you say anything to Mike?

Hi Judy Pearl. I didn’t see with my own eyes Mike drinking from the tainted cup in the garbage. Our departmental scheduler told me about it. No one witnessed it but her. Never the less I do believe it to be true. She is a very attractive young lady and I think Mike may have just been doing a little grandstanding to show her that he is the Germ King like no other. Some guys flirt by flexing their muscles or maybe give a little wink. Mike gets attention by doing dirty deeds. I think he was one of those kids growing up whom if you dared him to eat a bug or lick a rock for a dime he would. Little did he know, some day he would make it a career. Mohammad Ali was a great fighter, Gregory Peck a great actor, Mark Twain a great writer. But let it go down in history, “Mike Rowe is the Duke of Dirt”. Let us all pick from the trash and toast our dirty cups to the King. Cheers to the king!!!!!!!!!

Hey Ed,

I wanted to respond right away but my computer died.
No it wasn’t the power supply, just “old” age.

Great segment. You have a huge Dirty Job with huge pieces of machinery.
The Crawlers are our present day equivalent to the Pyramids.
A few questions, actually a few more than a few.
Were you there when the Saturn V’s rolled out? The Crawlers outlasted them!
How many crawlers are there? I count 4?
If and when the new re-useable spacecraft is built to replace the shuttle, will the Crawler-Launch Table configuration be reused? Based on the care you take with the Crawlers, they should last another 40 years.
I hope the IAM & AW managed to settle on some sort of agreement.
I don’t know if the fans know, but I believe it took almost a year of paperwork and wading through red tape to get Crew clearance to shoot this relatively short segment.
Without the care and diligence of the Crawler Crew, nothing would get to and leave the launch pad.

For those interested and if you haven’t seen these already:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020304.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/behindscenes/crawler-history.html
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/shuttle/crawler_shoes.html
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1361.htm
http://apollomaniacs.web.infoseek.co.jp/apollo/crawlere.htm
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0208/12crawler/
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-4519592_ITM

Ed, Thanks for braving the boards.
PS-Did you see the Crew was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography?
You got to see why.

Hi all I have tried to answer several questions but my posts are being reviewd and not allowed sorry. Ed

Thanks Eric for all these links. I especially liked the story about Phillip Koehring and his sons who designed the crawler.

Maybe not a dirty job, but a very important one.

Kathy

Spock, If you go to my site I will e-mail answers for you.http://www.spacecoastphoto.com/

Ed, I want to read what you wrote when I have a bit more time and when I have access to my part-time glasses for far-sightedness (don't need those too often). In the meantime, I have a very significant question to ask you:

Do you ever look at the grease and think, "This would be quite tasty on ice cream?"

That is what really struck me. The grease looked like melted chocolate. I was jonesing.

Diane

Hi Ed,
The crawler was a GREAT segment... You have a great job! Unfortunately it was on too late for my kid to see but the husband and I enjoyed it.

on this board, we call the "posts to be reviewed" Trigger. We meet Trigger a lot around here. We really aren't sure exactly what sets him off but... there ya have it.

Oh, the cup thing was gross. eew.

Hi Diane That grease is what is known as whitmore compound. It is an open gear lube and is the thickest grease known to man. Yes very tasty looking but not. Thanks for the trigger info guys.

Diane,

Put Ed's whitmore compound with the axle grease from the Army job and you might have a very good looking, yet not very tasty, peanut butter cup going.

Hey! You've got whitmore compound in my axle grease! No, you've got axle grease in my whitmore compound!!!

Fleur

If it's any help, I made a trigger word list, with a few trigger words on it.

http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2401445/1/

me = good samaritan

-Meaghan
-------------
http://www.myspace.com/dirtyjobschatroom

Just saw that show again last night. Looks like y'all did have a great time. Thank you for sharing it. I live in Florida too can't believe He was actually that close......dang it....oh well...One day......lol
Look forward to more of your stories you'll be sharing with Us Ed.

Hi Ed, nice to meet you. That was a great segment with your group. I have another photo.

Mike and Ed

Hi Spock. I wasn’t there for the Saturn program. I hired on 1987. But as a young aircraft mechanic I was surrounded by guys who were there for the entire Saturn program. They trained me so I was around them a lot and able to here a lot of great stories about those days. They are all just about gone now with the exception of a few. There are only two crawlers CT1 and CT-2. I am the mechanical foreman for CT-2. We just celebrated our forty year anniversary not that long ago. Yes the crawlers will be around for a while. We just completed several modifications to the Hydraulic systems and have replaced every shoe on both transporters. We have also installed several noise solution systems on both CTs but CT-2 has the most upgrades and is more quiet than CT-1. In the old days the crawlers jacking and hydraulic systems were operated manually by technicians. In other words the leveling process for the trip to the pads was done by hand. Now there are computers doing it automatically and maintained by an engineering staff. It takes about thirty personnel to roll out a shuttle. I read some where on this chat some one had said Mike was wrong about the crawler speed being one mile an hour. And that the crawler top speed unloaded is two miles per hour. This is not true Mike is correct. The crawler never goes over one mile per hour loaded or not. No one knows the actual top speed because it would be too dangerous to attempt anything above one mph. The crawler would simply start falling apart at anything higher. There would be too much stress on the moving parts. The crawler is constantly being lubricated and there are many moving parts that fail often. It is not unusual to have to stop and make repairs on the trip to the pads. We have broken shoes burned up bearings and had hydraulic failures which have forced us to return the orbiter to the VAB ,go get another crawler and start over again. Usually it is CT-1 that breaks though. My crew keeps a tighter ship. LOL. As far as getting dirty jobs to film at the space center you are absolutely correct. At first NASA didn’t want Dirty Jobs to come because they were afraid of what Mike might say. That he may make a derogatory comment or something. So I talked to the NASA pr people and told them I would draw up a job assignment and send it to Mary Bess Walker who is one of the shows producers. Mary agreed to follow the script. Together Mary and I were able to sway NASA to let the show come out if Mike promised to behave. The job assignment actually went to Washington NASA headquarters to be looked at for approval. But I did not put in the story board the part about Mike driving the crawler. I had to per sway my manager Ray Trapp the guy who was with Mike when he drove it to let him. He was very nervous about it and normally he doesn’t drive but he wanted to make sure everything went OK so he assisted him personally. There were many parts filmed that were left out. I was saddened by this because Earl Shifflet My hydraulic mechanic that showed Mike the pump room was cut out of the show. He is the guy who wrote to the show and got the whole thing started. I just helped things along a little. I think NASA may have had something to do with the edit. They don’t like showing certain parts of the crawler for security reasons. This may be why the crawler segment wasn’t as long as the Mac Bridge segment. Thanks for your interests I hope I answered all your questions. Thank you for the links.

Hi Spock. I wasn’t there for the Saturn program. I hired on 1987. But as a young aircraft mechanic I was surrounded by guys who were there for the entire Saturn program. They trained me so I was around them a lot and able to here a lot of great stories about those days. They are all just about gone now with the exception of a few. There are only two crawlers CT1 and CT-2. I am the mechanical foreman for CT-2. We just celebrated our forty year anniversary not that long ago. Yes the crawlers will be around for a while. We just completed several modifications to the Hydraulic systems and have replaced every shoe on both transporters. We have also installed several noise solution systems on both CTs but CT-2 has the most upgrades and is more quiet than CT-1. In the old days the crawlers hydraulic systems were operated manually by technicians. In other words the leveling process for the trip to the pads was done by hand. Now there are computers doing it automatically and maintained by an engineering staff. It takes about thirty personnel to roll out a shuttle. I read some where on this chat some one had said Mike was wrong about the crawler speed being one mile an hour. And that the crawler top speed unloaded is two miles per hour. This is not true Mike is correct. The crawler never goes over one mile per hour loaded or not. No one knows the actual top speed because it would be too dangerous to attempt anything above one mph. The crawler would simply start falling apart at anything higher. There would be too much stress on the moving parts. The crawler is constantly being lubricated and there are many moving parts that fail often. It is not unusual to have to stop and make repairs on the trip to the pads. We have broken shoes burned up bearings and had hydraulic failures which have forced us to return the orbiter to the VAB ,go get another crawler and start over again. Usually it is CT-1 that breaks though. My crew keeps a tighter ship. LOL. As far as getting dirty jobs to film at the space center you are absolutely correct. At first NASA didn’t want Dirty Jobs to come because they were afraid of what Mike might say. That he may make a derogatory comment or something. So I talked to the NASA pr people and told them I would draw up a job assignment and send it to Mary Bess Walker who is one of the shows producers. Mary agreed to follow the script. Together Mary and I were able to sway NASA to let the show come out if Mike promised to behave. The job assignment actually went to Washington NASA headquarters to be looked at for approval. But I did not put in the story board the part about Mike driving the crawler. I had to per sway my manager Ray Trapp the guy who was with Mike when he drove it to let him. He was very nervous about it and normally he doesn’t drive but he wanted to make sure everything went OK so he assisted him personally. There were many parts filmed that were left out. I was saddened by this because Earl Shifflet My hydraulic mechanic that showed Mike the pump room was cut out of the show. He is the guy who wrote to the show and got the whole thing started. I just helped things along a little. I think NASA may have had something to do with the edit. They don’t like showing certain parts of the crawler for security reasons. This may be why the crawler segment wasn’t as long as the Mac Bridge segment. Thanks for your interests I hope I answered all your questions. Thank you for the links.

Ed, you are a welcomed wealth of knowledge.

Shark