AirSpaceMag.com

Buddy Rogers has worked various jobs at KSC for 27 years, the last 11 as a hypergolic technician. His job is to fill the giant external tank that fuels the shuttle’s main engines. It takes three days to load the half-million gallons of oxidizer and propellant. “The booster tanks come alive — they moan and creak and rumble — and I can’t let any outside distraction, like worrying about what’s next, make me lose my focus,” he says. “You can’t do this scared. I love it and I’m staying, absolutely, baby, as long as possible. It’ll take a while to decommission [perhaps as long as 18 months after the last flight], and I hope to be in on that. Frankly, I don’t want to do anything else.” Rogers thinks NASA should throw a huge party for the thousands of people who have kept the shuttles flying all these years. “We need to celebrate in a big way all we’ve accomplished.”

David Burnett/Contact Press Images

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Photos from: "Throttle Down" »