AirSpaceMag.com

Ray Trapp has a theory: “The Chinese are going to the moon and they’ll plant their flag up there and bring ours back down and put it on eBay.” Trapp, 43, came to work at KSC at age 20 right out of the Marine Corps, and he has the calm demeanor you want in the guy driving the monstrous crawler-transporter, which, with the mobile launch platform and shuttle stack on it, weighs 17.5 million pounds. But his composure wavers slightly when he mulls the thought that the United States soon will, for the foreseeable future, lose its ability to put humans in space. He’s too young to simply retire, and as a heavy equipment operator, he’s been trusted to move the most expensive and biggest piece of equipment on land. But he dreads the idea of searching the want ads. “Nothing,” he says, “will ever be as satisfying as this.”

David Burnett/Contact Press Images

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Photos from: "Throttle Down" »