S-IC (July 10)

The "Rocket Roll" ceremony was scheduled for 9:30 the next morning (Tuesday July 10); it was a rather dreary morning which quickly turned into a very rainy day.

We arrived a bit earlier to again survey the state of the Saturn. We found that since the close of the museum the previous night, the contractors had removed the wheels from the S-IC transporter (we later found out that they were working until midnight) and that the stage had been jacked up some eight or nine feet into the air and was resting on what we likened to "Jenga blocks," jacks made of some sort of African hardwood.

The hardwood jack would be replaced with jacks looking like metal spools, and eventually the stage would then be placed on specialized crawlers. The crawlers are certainly impressive pieces of machinery. They have six sets of wheels, each of which can be individually steered and positioned vertically. The crawler positioned under the aft end of the S-IC was double-wide (apparently two crawlers which had been mechanically and electrically fastened together), while the forward crawler consisted of a single unit.

Unfortunately, the rain caused the crawlers' wheels to slip, so the crew put down steel plates and sheets plywood over the wet gravel to combat this slippage.

The day ended with the S-IC still parked in its traditional location.