| NASA RELEASE 61-207
MANNED SPACE FLIGHT LABORATORY LOCATION
The
Manned Space Flight Center location study is completed.
James E. Webb, Administrator of NASA, announced today
the completion of the study to determine the location
of the agency's new $60,000,000 Manned Space Flight
Laboratory. The facility was authorized by Congress
for initiation in the current Fiscal Year. The laboratory
will be located in Houston, Texas on 1,000 acres of
land to be made available to the government by Rice
University. The land, in Harris County, borders on Clear
Lake and on the Houston Light and Power Company Salt
Water Canal.
The
Manned Space Flight Laboratory will be the command center
for the Manned Lunar Landing mission and all follow-on
manned space flight missions. It will be utilized to
design, develop, evaluate and test the spacecraft for
Project Apollo as well as all of its subsystems and
to train the crew that will fly these missions. The
FY 62 appropriation provided funds for the development
of a site, and construction of 4 integrated facilities:
(1) a flight project facility, (2) an equipment evaluation
laboratory, (3) a flight operations facility and (4)
an environmental testing lab.
Mr.
Webb pointed out that the recently announced expansion
of the Atlantic Missile Range at Cape Canaveral, Florida,
as the launch site for the very large space vehicle
to be constructed, and with the establishment of a fabrication
facility at the Michoud plant near the mouth of the
Mississippi River at New Orleans, the location of the
new laboratory at Houston would facilitate the establishment
of an integrated facilities system connected by deep
water transportation and capable of handling the large
spacecraft and launch vehicles in the Apollo manned
lunar landing projects.
This
grouping of the facilities in a region permitting out-of-door
work for most of the year provides flexibility and a
capability of expansion to meet the needs of a very
large vehicle which present projections indicate will
be required for heavier payloads and deeper penetration
into space beyond the moon to the planets. |
