The building in this photo is NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). I photographed it while touring the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It is where the Apollo moon rockets were assembled. It is now where the space shuttles are prepared for their missions. It is the largest single-story building in the world.
The VAB stands 525 feet tall. Its footprint covers 8 acres. It encloses nearly 130 million square feet of space. The building actually has its own weather (it rains in there, sometimes). An American flag painted on the side of the building required 6,000 gallons of paint. This building is big.
So my irony detector went off when I spied the huge cumulonimbus cloud approaching the VAB. One of the best efforts of humankind was dwarfed by a minor creation of God.
It reminds me of an old comedy routine by Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner about a 2,000-year-old man. Reiner would ask Brooks, who played the ancient sage, what they worshipped way back then. Brooks would answer, “Phil.” Why Phil? Because Phil was huge and would beat the snot out of anyone who would cross paths with him. Naturally, they did everything they could to appease Phil. That is, until one day when Phil was struck by lightning. Then they all turned to each other and said with amazement, “There’s somebody bigger than Phil!”
There’s Somebody way bigger than us.
Click on photo to make the big building and the big cloud a little bigger. © 2005 James Jordan.
2 comments:
I worked in that building for several months and occasionally still make my way back there. It does really rain in there sometimes. The elevators in there are really fun, especially the one with the window in the side. They go so fast that it makes for a great ride. The building is considered "single story" because parts of it are, but there are also multi-storied towers inside.
bigger than phil... hee heee hee
I like that!
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