SpaceX, who tend to be a lot more budget-conscious, assemble their rockets lying down and then hoist them to vertical, thusly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrAr4ovtf9Q&feature=relat...
That seems a lot easier and cheaper. I'm tempted to think that maybe there's some factor that makes it more difficult to engineer a rocket that can handle sideways stresses as well as vertical stresses, but... heck, it's a rocket, they shouldn't be that fragile, should they?
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/11/rare-photos-of-russi...
http://www.energia.ru/english/energia/launchers/vehicle_n1-l...
Until the crane lifted the space shuttle. That is one serious crane. Like you say - the shuttle is kind of swamped by that shed.
That is some heavy duty machinery they have there
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taisun
The space shuttle orbiter weighs 109 tons. The Taisun can lift twenty thousand tons.
A couple of SSME-class engines on the bottom of that tank, with two or four SRBs around it would make for a very serious launcher. BTW, that's the idea behind the Jupiter boosters the DIRECT folks were proposing.
And it has absolutely nothing to do with hanging, which makes sense because you don't hang things in a hangar anyway.
But... It would have been even _better_ if it had used _The Blue Danube_ for background music. Especially as it was being hoisted on the crane.
Edit: I just tried this by finding a _Blue Danube_ movie on Youtube and playing it in the background while re-watching the movie. It should be a _crime_ not to try this. Some interesting serendipities in timing, especially involving violin solos and the cable top shot sequence.
I'll try _Dark Side of the Moon_ next...
http://www.airspacemag.com/multimedia/videos/Go-For-Launch.h...
