Michoud Assembly Facility
_-_GPN-2000-000046.jpg)
Michoud Assembly Facility in 1968
|
|
 Location in Louisiana
|
|
| Built | 1940 |
|---|---|
| Location | New Orleans East |
| Coordinates | 30°01′30″N 89°54′54″W / 30.025000°N 89.915000°WCoordinates: 30°01′30″N 89°54′54″W / 30.025000°N 89.915000°W |
| Industry | Aeronautics |
| Employees | 3,700 |
| Buildings | 1 |
| Area | 832 acres (3.37 km2) |
| Owner(s) | NASA |
The Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) is an 832-acre (3.37 km2) site owned by NASA in New Orleans East, a district within New Orleans, Louisiana in the United States. Organizationally it is part of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and is currently a multi-tenant complex to allow commercial and government contractors, as well as government agencies, to use the site.
MAF is one of the largest manufacturing plants in the world with 43 environmentally controlled acres (174,000 m2 (1,870,000 sq ft)) under one roof, and it employs approximately 3,700 people. From September 1961 to the end of the Apollo program in December 1972 the site was utilized by Chrysler Corp to build the first stages of the Saturn I and Saturn IB, later joined by Boeing Corp to build the first stage of the Saturn Vs. From September 5, 1973 to September 20, 2010 it was used for the construction of the Space Shuttle's external fuel tanks by Martin Marietta Corp., Denver Colo.
The facility was originally constructed in 1940 at the village of Michoud, Louisiana by Higgins-Tucker division of Higgins Industries under the direction of Andrew Jackson Higgins on behalf of the United States government for the war production during World War II to make plywood C-76 cargo planes and landing craft. During the Korean War it made engines for Sherman and Patton tanks, and boasted a 5,500 foot paved runway. It came under the management of NASA in 1961 and was used for the construction of the S-IC first stage of the Saturn V rockets and the S-IB first stage of the Saturn IB rockets built by Chrysler Corp. It is home to the first stage of the last-constructed Saturn V, SA-515 built by Chrysler Corp. and Boeing Corp. It must be noted that its height limitation, unable to allow the construction of the bigger C-8 direct Moon vehicle, was one of the major reasons why the smaller C-5 (later renamed Saturn V) was chosen instead of the originally planned Moon vehicle.
...
Wikipedia