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).[5] 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.[6]
During the Korean War, the Chrysler Corporation utilized remaining manufacturing infrstructure and rechristened the factory as the Michoud Ordnance Plant[7], where it produced engines for Sherman and Patton tanks, and boasted a 5500 foot 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.[8] MSFC Michoud Operations came under the management of NASA in 1961, and was renamed Michoud Assembly Facility in 1965.[9] 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.[6]
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.[10] A single tank produced at the facility, ET-94, was not used in spaceflight and remained at Michoud as a test article.[4][11]
Modular parts for the International Space Station were fabricated at the facility in the mid-1990s until 2010.[12]
The factory is now the location for the Space Launch System (SLS)'s core and future second stage construction by Boeing.[13][14][15] 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.[16][17][18][19]
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,[24] which had been reused as a road, Saturn Boulevard.[25] It was flown the short distance to New Orleans International Airport, where it was fully repaired.[24]
Hurricane Katrina
The facility did not experience significant flooding during Hurricane Katrina due to a natural ridge that runs along its northwestern boundary, the levee that makes up the southern and eastern boundaries, and the work of the pump operators who stayed to protect the facility during the storm. Several buildings sustained wind and rainwater damage.
