Where are NASA’s rockets born? “To go to space, it must come through New Orleans”

Since Saturn I and V, the Michoud Assembly Facility has been the start of space travel.

by Nathan Mattise and Jennifer Hahn

MICHOUD, La.—Bobby Watkins hears it all the time. He's on a plane with some work materials, and a neighbor will notice the unmistakable "meatball." (That's a loving nickname for NASA's iconic blue spherical logo shared by many around his office.) Watkins isn't in transit to Houston, Florida, or Southern California, however, so onlookers inevitably ask, “You work for NASA? Why are you going to New Orleans?”

Watkins doesn't just work for NASA; he's the current director at the space organization's Michoud Assembly Facility. The 800+ acre campus sits about 15 miles east of New Orleans, and NASA has operated it since the 1960s. But despite the long history, Michoud feels like NASA's hidden chapter. Glitzy shuttle launches and major research breakthroughs tend to happen elsewhere, and unlike the other nearby facilities—Mississippi’s Stennis, Alabama’s Marshall, or Florida’s Kennedy Space Center—Michoud doesn’t even offer public tours anymore. The low profile does not equate to low organizational priority, however. Since the days of Saturn I and Saturn V, every major NASA initiative that takes to the stars physically passes through Michoud, Louisiana.

"All the large-scale manufacturing for NASA takes place right here at Michoud," Watkins said. "In order to go to space, it must come through New Orleans."

For a long time, this most notably meant tanks—specifically external tanks (ET). ETs were the orange-ish foam covered containers attached to the shuttle in order to carry large quantities of fuel and oxidizer. They were massive creations; even the Lightweight varietal came in with jawdropping specifications: 65,000 pounds, 154-feet long, and over 27 feet in diameter. During lift-off, ETs would transfer the fuel and oxidizer to the Space Shuttle Main Engines before detaching and falling back to the ocean. And starting with Space Transportation System-1 (STS-1) in 1981, every ET that powered NASA shuttles into orbit originated at Michoud. In total, the facility produced 135 of them.

Michoud also famously handled pivotal retrofitting work on ETs following the Columbia tragedy, where foam from an external tank was pegged as the likely culprit. The pressure for that initiative was immense as the fate of the Space Shuttle program quite literally hung in the balance. Adding to the difficulty, however, was the timing. That do-or-die moment for the modern Shuttle program took place in 2005, when the greater New Orleans area (Michoud included) faced the unthinkable hardships of Hurricane Katrina. With devastation all around the area, 38 rideout crew members from Michoud managed to keep the lights on and get the facility back up and running within a month.

“NASA did not miss a manifest due to the storm,” said Malcolm Wood, the current deputy chief operating officer at Michoud and a member of that rideout crew. “We got the tanks here, got them retrofitted, and got them back to the Cape in two weeks despite having no electricity and no water."

Today Michoud is a buzzing multi-tenant facility, and only a handful of mementos and plaques would tip visitors off to the site's Herculean modern history. After the Space Shuttle program transitioned out, the facility turned to Space Act Agreements to leverage their world-class manufacturing tools and environment and attract a more diverse array of tenants. Michoud now hosts the Coast Guard and USDA, wind turbine and military gear manufacturers, and even Hollywood production houses.

But just like yesteryear, all of NASA's aspirations continue to manifest themselves first in Michoud. Currently there's no bigger project at the facility than the high-profile Space Launch System (SLS) and Orioncapsule. Together, those two components make up NASA's successor to the shuttle program, and the not-so-subtle elevator pitch is deep-space travel to Mars. Critics, politicians, and other interested parties may continue to argue about the feasibility and value of such goals, but at Michoud this process is real and well underway. With 2018 as the target for test flights and the early 2020s as a target for test missions carrying astronauts, deadlines have been set. As such, components of both SLS and Orion are currently being worked on at Michoud.

Just before the new year, Watkins and his colleagues were kind enough to show Ars some of the progress and explain a bit of the tremendous manufacturing taking place. (Remember that while software and computing parts will inevitably get swapped out, a lot of the massive hardware being built at Michoud today will be used for decades going into space.) We spent so much time touring the facilities, in fact, that just one story won't do it justice. The video above is merely part one of our four-part series on the Michoud Assembly Facility and how the roots of NASA's grand ambitions are created there today. As Watkins puts it, "A lot of the time you think of New Orleans as being a place for great jazz, great food, or the French Quarter, but I want people to think of New Orleans as where we start our journey to Mars and deep space."

Listing image by Nathan Mattise