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Teams at Bechtel fabricated temporary pedestals 8 feet off the ground, facilitating a much more efficient and safer initial steel build process by sitting lower to the ground. These extremely large steel truss subassemblies, some weighing over 100,000 pounds each, sat on temporary bases. Once the entire 2.6 million-pound skeleton of the base was fully torqued and welded, teams used a specialized heavy-duty jacking system to raise the base to allow sufficient space for the spaceport’s crawler to be situated underneath the structure ahead of repositioning.
Four self-propelled modular transporters were driven underneath the sides of the steel assembly and then lowered the base onto eight surrounding jacks. Once secured, teams removed the transporters and used jacks to raise the base 18 feet to allow for crawler access underneath the structure. The crawler was then positioned under the new base skeleton, raised the structure a few inches higher, and repositioned it about 200 feet to the six permanent pedestals, called mount mechanisms, completing the “jack and set” operation.
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