“Without exception, every person that visits NASA’s massive rocket mover smiles and stares in awe and admiration at the colossal size and power of the agency’s workhorse,” John Giles describes, “including me!”
Giles is no stranger to the magic of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, having grown up across the Indian River as his father was a communications technician for decades. “We neighborhood space brats would run to the water’s edge for every Apollo launch, including 11,” Giles remembers. “Every one of us had a parent working on the program, so we lived and breathed NASA.”
It’s no surprise then that he pursued degrees in both mechanical and electrical engineering, which launched his 33-year and counting agency career. For the last decade, Giles has led the crawler operations team and has every intention of staying put. “I’ve never been happier or more in my element. The crawler itself couldn’t make me budge,” Giles declared.
Considering that the crawler transporter-2 (CT-2) can carry as much weight as 20 fully loaded 777 airplanes, that’s a hefty declaration. Yet NASA’s crawler element operations manager is happiest in the vast outside crawler yard, working alongside the engineers and technicians that ensure the 57-year-old engineering marvel runs better today than when it was commissioned in 1964. “Every time I talk to the crew, I’m more impressed with their encyclopedic knowledge and dedication to the Artemis I mission.”
Giles’ respect for the crawler crew is an extension of when, every night at dinner, his dad spoke with reverence about the people who worked on the Apollo Program at Kennedy, and today, he is the one sharing stories with his father. “My dad still gets excited at the young age of 84 when we talk about Kennedy’s progress toward the Artemis I launch. It’s a special legacy between us.”
Also like his father, Giles is heading toward his fourth decade working at Kennedy and can’t imagine the day when his mornings won’t kick off with the smell of grease and diesel. “The crawler yard is the best ‘office’ I can imagine; it’s hot, dusty, and the Florida Sun is relentless, but the vibrating purr from the massive engine rooms is an engineer’s symphony when we’re ready to roll.”
We have to crawl before we can launch: watch the crawler haul the Space Launch System rocket stack to the launch pad for wet dress rehearsal