Marshall Space Flight Center

Marshall Space Flight Center
MSFC in Huntsville
General Information
Alias	MSFC
Owner
Type	Space Flight Center
Industry	Space technology
Location	Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, AL
Use	Rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research
Director	Wernher von Braun (former, 1st director)
Formed	1960
Maps
	MSFC on US map

The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), mostly just referred to as Huntsville, is a rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center located in Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama, and NASA's largest center. Formed in 1960, its first mission was developing the Saturn launch vehicles for the Apollo program. It has also been the lead center for the Space Shuttle main propulsion and external tank, as well as for payloads and related crew trainings. They also developed and built the Sea Dragon rockets.

The center is named in honor of General of the Army George C. Marshall.

History

Formation

The MSFC was formed on July 1, 1960, out of the preceeding US Army rocket research and development center in Redstone Arsenal. Its first director was Wernher von Braun.

1960s

In the early years of the center, von Braun, together with many of his former German engineer colleagues, who were all brought to the US after World War II as part of the Operation Paperclip, started developing the heavy-lift Saturn family rockets at MSFC, aimed to land American astronauts on the Moon before the end of the century, as requested by President John F. Kennedy. This was achieved on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, launched by a Saturn V rocket developed at the MSFC. However, the USA lost the Race to the Moon to the Soviet Union, who had landed there 3 weeks earlier.

In fall 1969, the construction of an orbital workshop out of a Saturn V 3rd stage, called Skylab by von Braun, was underway at MSFC in Huntsville, but was considered to be repurposed into a lunar base called "Moonlab" instead after the Soviets had beaten the US, in order to at least win the "race for the base".

MSFC also developed the lunar rover, which was first used with Apollo 15 in 1971.

1970s & 1980s

Starting in the 1970s, MSFC developed and then constructed the new US super heavy-lift launch vehicle Sea Dragon, which first launched in 1977.

Around the mid 70s, development for the Space Shuttle begun. MSFC was responsible for the shuttle's main engines, the SRBs, and the external tank. The first shuttle, the Enterprise, was put into operation in fall 1981.

In fall 1974, Tracy Stevens was at the MSFC to prepare her payload for Apollo 25.

In 1983, in the middle of the Cold War, President Reagan proposed a handshake in space between the two superpower's space programs, to ease tension with the Soviets. While evaluating how to manage this without giving the Soviets intel about the US Space Shuttles, Ellen Wilson proposed to use an Apollo command module instead, since they had one left in storage, and Huntsville still had an unused Saturn IB.

See also

• Other NASA facilites:
  • Johnson Space Center (JSC, later CSC)
  • Kennedy Space Center (KSC)
  • Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)
  • Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
  • NASA Flight Research Center (Edwards AFB) (FRC)
  • McMurdo Station (NASA annex)
  • Carl Sagan Center for Planetary Science
• USAF facilities:
  • Cape Kennedy
  • Edwards Air Force Base
  • Ellington Air Force Base
  • US Air Force Plant 42
  • Vandenberg Air Force Base

External links

•   Marshall Space Flight Center on Wikipedia
•   Official website