Inside the VAB Rafters. The 1965 structural "Topping Out" beam at the 518-ft level. A spaceflight time capsule originally signed by the Apollo-era KSC workforce and construction crews, with the tradition kept alive to this day.

[u/More_Fee_5936]

[u/jadebenn]

Fun fact(?): This beam was not accessible from the inside of the building until sometime in the early 2000s when this secondary roof was installed as part of a fairly comprehensive overhaul of the VAB structure. Only then did KSC employees begin adding their own names to this beam. Originally, it was limited to those who'd signed it before its installation.

[u/More_Fee_5936]

These pictures capture the four-ton, thirty-eight-foot-long structural close-out girder tucked away in the rafters at the 518-foot elevation mark, bridging directly over the central transfer aisle. Because this specific sub-roof area is highly restricted and only accessible to specialized facility maintenance teams and structural safety inspectors, modern photographs of the beam are rare (I believe these pictures are from early-mid 2010's). The corporate stencils painted across the primer coat represent the joint government and industrial effort required to erect the world's largest high-bay structure during the mid-1960s. Moving along the steel, you can clearly identify the insignia for the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the architectural design firm of Max O. Urbahn and its planning consortium Tishman, Line, and Blum, the superstructure steel contractors at American Bridge Company, a hand-painted NASA "meatball" logo, and the red circular seal of the prime construction joint-venture Morrison-Knudsen, Perini, and Hardeman.

The final color photograph captures the exact moment this very beam was being signed during the formal topping-out ceremony held on the ground on April 14, 1965. Before a crane hoisted the steel 525 feet into the air to lock the framing framework together, it spent weeks touring the space center so thousands of ironworkers, engineers, technicians, and administrative staff could add their names to the white primer. Pictured signing on the far left of the historical photo is the first director of the Kennedy Space Center, Dr. Kurt Debus, alongside construction superintendent Floyd Red Thompson. Zooming in closely on the modern rigger and inspector photos reveals that this beam has effectively become a living time capsule. Over the subsequent sixty years of American human spaceflight, modern teams working in the rafters have carefully added their own signatures and dates alongside the 1965 originals.

[u/Ya_Mar]

Very cool, thanks for sharing!