Hello, stargazers! 🚀 October gave me two drive-bys at the SpaceX Gigabay at Kennedy Space Center, one on October 11 and one this morning, October 29, and the second one came with the news I’ve been waiting all year for: we have doors on the north side! 🎉 So this month’s report is a little story in two parts: what I saw on October 11, and then the big update 18 days later.
Header photo: October 29 – the north side, from the road. Look for: the two openings at the base of the black wall, now with door panels in them (the left one is partly up, so you can see steel and lights inside); the tall orange crane leaning against the sky at the right; the long thin slit near the top; the little row of small windows about a third of the way up; and the lighter end wall at the left, catching the early sun. 🌅
A quick reminder of how I take these: the road runs north and south with the Gigabay on its west side, and I snap photos as I drive by, so my angles change every time. I’ll tell you what I can see, say “looks like” when I’m not sure, and add the real construction words so we can learn them together. 🌟 The October 11 photos are from around midday; the October 29 ones are from one pass a little before 8 AM.
Where we left off (my August report)
In my August report (August 9 and August 30), the big news was that the black wall seemed to run all the way to the top: the thin band of open white steel I could still see in July was gone from view. (No September report, by the way: I didn’t get out to shoot in September, so this month picks up right where August left off. 😊) Here’s what I could see back then:
- Wall: plain black wall from the base all the way to the top edge, on both the north and south sides, with no open white steel above it that I could find.
- North side: two garage-door-style openings at the base, with steel visible inside and no door panels that I could see.
- South side: two very tall openings framed in steel, still wide open.
- Up high: a long thin slit near the top of the north wall, and a small window-like opening near the top of the lighter end wall.
- Around it: a few cranes (I described them only by color), trailers and parked vehicles along the north side, and fresh grading on the south side.
October 11: closed in, but still no doors
By my October 11 drive-by, the building still looked closed in from the road, just like in August: the dark walls ran right up to a clean edge at the roofline. Builders call closing in the walls and roof the building envelope. I can’t see the roof itself from the road, so I can’t say how much of it is done.
- North wall details. The long thin slit near the top that I spotted in August is still there, and a short row of four small openings on the right side, below the middle of the wall.
- North openings still empty. Same as in August, the two shorter openings at the base were still open, with no door panels that I could see. Through one of them I could see several levels of railed work platforms, stairs and steel inside.
- The very tall openings. On the south side, the two huge openings were still open, as in August, full of white steel towers and platforms.
- Around the base. Trailers, parked vehicles, white plastic barriers, a row of small utility carts and yellow caution tape.
October 29: doors on the north side! 🚪
Eighteen days later, those north openings, still empty in August and on October 11, weren’t empty anymore. Here’s what changed, and what didn’t:
- Roll-up doors. Both shorter north openings now have what look like overhead roll-up doors: wide doors made of horizontal panels that roll or fold up above the opening instead of swinging out. One was partly raised, so I could see steel framing, platforms and lights inside beneath it.
- A big crane on the north side. A tall orange lattice-boom crane (the criss-cross steel arm kind) was set up right by the north wall, between the doors, with its arm leaning up the face of the building. I don’t know what it’s lifting or working on.
- Two colors of cladding. The long faces are dark, and the end wall facing the road is a lighter color that looked warm tan in the morning sun (it looked gray on October 11). The panels have thin horizontal joint lines across them. Cladding is just the outer skin of panels hung on the steel frame.
- Windows up high. The slit and the little row of small windows are still there, now showing bluish, and the window-like slot high on the lighter end wall (the one I wondered about in August) was glowing gold in the sunrise.
- A door on the south side, too? 👀 Look at the right-hand one of the two huge openings on the south side: across the very top there’s a band of what looks like horizontal panels, a bit like the north roll-up doors. It looks like a door may be going in there as well, just partly, with the rest of the opening still open below it. I can’t tell for sure from the road, so I’ll call it a maybe! The left opening still looks open to me. Tall steel towers with stair-stepped framing run up their edges. Those vertical frames might be guides or framing for very tall doors one day, but that’s only my guess from the road.
- Tidier grounds. On the tall-openings side there’s a paved parking lot, light poles, big dark planters with silvery shrubs, a lawn and a little gazebo.
Terms to know ✨
- Overhead (roll-up) door: a door made of horizontal panels or slats that rolls or folds up above the opening. Common on warehouses and hangars.
- High-bay opening: an extra-tall opening in a tall building, big enough for very large vehicles or equipment to pass through.
- Door guides / jambs: the vertical frames along the sides of a door opening that hold the door and guide it as it moves.
- Building envelope: everything that closes a building in from the weather, meaning walls, roof, windows and doors.
- Work platform: a flat, railed floor built inside a structure so crews can reach high places safely.
- Lattice-boom crane: a crane whose long arm is built from criss-crossing steel, like a tall ladder.
What I’m watching next
- Whether that maybe-door at the top of the right south opening grows into a full door, and whether the left one gets one, too.
- Whether I catch the north doors open or closed next time.
- What the orange crane by the north wall is up to.
- More landscaping and parking around the edges.
Thank you for stargazing with me! Seeing doors go in makes it feel so real. 💫 Until next time, keep looking up.
All photos by The Star Queen, taken from a public road at Kennedy Space Center. Faces, license plates and small tags are blurred, boxed or cropped for privacy. Photos are not official and are not affiliated with SpaceX or NASA.