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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michoud Assembly Facility | 1/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michoud_Assembly_Facility | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:21:36.805977+00:00 | kb-cron |
The Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) is an 832-acre (337-hectare) industrial complex for the manufacture and structural assembly of aerospace vehicles and components. It is owned by NASA and located in New Orleans East, a section of 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 more than 4,200 people. From September 1961 to the end of the Apollo program in December 1972 the site was utilized by Chrysler to build the S-I and S-IB first stages of the Saturn I and Saturn IB rockets, later joined by Boeing to build the S-IC first stage of the Saturn V. From September 5, 1973, to September 20, 2010, the factory was used by Martin Marietta for construction of the Space Shuttle's external fuel tanks. Today, MAF is used by Boeing to fabricate and assemble the core stage of the Space Launch System rocket and by Lockheed Martin to build the pressure vessel of the Orion spacecraft.
== History ==
The facility was originally constructed in 1940 at the village of Michoud, Louisiana, by the Higgins-Tucker division of Higgins Industries under the direction of Andrew Jackson Higgins. Construction was on behalf of the United States government for the war production during World War II of plywood C-76 cargo planes and the Higgins Boat landing craft. The project cost $180 million ($2.8 billion in 2018). Production of the C-76 never commenced and instead produced two Curtiss C-46 Commando in 1943 and remaining order cancelled in 1944. The facility was referred to as Michoud (Factory) Airfield in the 1940s and briefly as a National Guard field in 1949, but became inactive by 1952. During the Korean War, the Chrysler Corporation utilized remaining manufacturing infrstructure and rechristened the factory as the Michoud Ordnance Plant, where it produced engines for Sherman and Patton tanks, and boasted a 1,700-metre (5,500 ft) paved runway. While production shut down with the end of U.S. active involvement in the war, the presence of Chrysler's remaining assets at Michoud played a role in the site's selection by Wernher von Braun to serve as Marshall Space Flight Center's primary manufacturing facility. MSFC Michoud Operations came under the management of NASA in 1961, and was renamed Michoud Assembly Facility in 1965. Over the next decade, the facility 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 Corporation. It is home to the first stage of the last-constructed Saturn V, SA-515, built by The Boeing Company. The factory's ceiling height limitation of 12 meters ruled out the construction of the bigger Saturn C-8 direct-ascent vehicle there, and therefore was one of the major reasons why the smaller C-5 (later renamed Saturn V) was chosen instead of the originally planned C-8 Moon vehicle. The runway was slowly transformed into Saturn Boulevard in the 1960s with the middle becoming a heliport and decommissioned by the 1970s. The majority of the NASA factory's history was focused on construction and production of NASA's Space Shuttle external tank (ET). Beginning with the rollout of ET-1 on June 29, 1979, which flew on STS-1, 136 tanks were produced throughout the Space Shuttle program, ending with the flight-ready tank ET-122, which flew on STS-134, rolled out on September 20, 2010. A single tank produced at the facility, ET-94, was not used in spaceflight and remained at Michoud as a test article. Modular parts for the International Space Station were fabricated at the facility in the mid-1990s until 2010. The factory is now the location for the Space Launch System (SLS)'s core and future second stage construction by Boeing. SLS is the most powerful rocket NASA has ever created, and ranks third in history of spaceflight, after the N1 and the SpaceX Starship. It carries the Orion spacecraft, whose crew module is also being built at Michoud, but by Lockheed Martin. It has 50% more volume than the Apollo command capsule and will carry four to six astronauts. The first launch occurred on November 16, 2022.
=== TACA Flight 110 Emergency === On May 24, 1988, TACA Flight 110 operated with a Boeing 737-300 jetliner made a successful emergency landing on a grassy levee in the Michoud grounds after power was lost in both engines during a severe thunderstorm. The aircraft was towed into the Michoud facility, where its engines were replaced. On 6 June, it took off, with a crew of two and minimal fuel, using the former runway at Michoud, which had been reused as a road, Saturn Boulevard. It was flown the short distance to New Orleans International Airport, where it was fully repaired.
=== Hurricane Katrina ===