On Lincoln's birthday, 1962, an LOD team visited Paradise,
Kentucky, to watch a Bucyrus-Erie 2,700-metric-ton crawler-
shovel in action. Albert Zeiler's report compared the crawler
favorably to LC-34's service structure. The work platform,
stabilized by hydraulic cylinders at the four corners, varied no
more than one-half degree from level. Nearby, Bucyrus-Erie was
constructing for the Peabody Coal Company a larger crawler-
shovel which would have a load-bearing capacity in excess of the
expected weight of the Saturn C-5 and its support equipment.
Although minimum speed for the existing crawler was only 6.1
meters per minute, more speed could be built into the new model.
Impressed with the crawler's potential, the LOD representatives
asked their hosts to propose a study program for LC-39.27
Bucyrus-Erie began such a study one month later. An LOD phone
call on 23 March requested preliminary information for Petrone's
congressional briefing that afternoon. Thomas Learmont, Bucyrus-
Erie's chief design engineer, pro