The Vehicle Assembly Building, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, Florida, USA
The Vehicle (originally Vertical) Assembly Building, or VAB, is the large building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), designed to assemble the large pre-manufactured space vehicle components, such as the massive Saturn V and the Space Shuttle; and stack them vertically onto the mobile launcher platform (MLP) and crawler-transporter. The future Space Launch System (SLS) will also be assembled there. At 129,428,000 cubic feet (3,665,000 m3) it is one of the largest buildings in the world by volume. The building is at Launch Complex 39 at KSC, halfway between Jacksonville and Miami, and due east of Orlando on Merritt Island on the Atlantic coast of Florida. The VAB is the largest single-story building in the world, was the tallest building (526 ft or 160 m) in Florida until 1974, and is still the tallest building in the United States outside an urban VAB, which was completed in 1966, was originally built to allow for the vertical assembly of the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo program and referred to as the Vertical Assembly Building. In anticipation of post-Saturn projects such as the Space Shuttle program, it was renamed the Vehicle Assembly Building in 1965, and was used for the shuttle's external fuel tanks and flight hardware, and to mate the Space Shuttle orbiters to their solid rocket boosters and external fuel tanks. Once assembled, the complete Space Shuttle was moved on the mobile launcher platform and crawler-transporter to LC-39A or LC-39B. Sometime prior to the destruction of Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, NASA installed a sub-roof inside the VAB to deal with falling concrete debris as a result of the building's age. There are four entries to the bays located inside the building, which are the four largest doors in the world. Each door is 456 feet ( m) high, has 7 vertical panels and 4 horizontal panels, and takes 45 minutes to completely open or close. The north entry that leads to the transfer aisle was widened by 40 feet
Size: 5260px × 3620px
Location: Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, Florida, USA
Photo credit: © John Gaffen / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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