Talk:Vehicle Assembly Building

Comment by Rackham
It appears that the main article has misquoted the source CNN news article about the size of the aluminum panels torn off in early September 2004. The CNN news article refers to 4'x10' panels (1000 of these would equal the 40,000 sq. ft. stated in the CNN article), whereas the Wikipedia article refers to 10'x40' panels (1000 of these would be 400,000 sq. ft., which would seem to be a large exaggeration). Perhaps this should be corrected. Norm.

I'm skeptical of the recent addition "..., NASA employees report that rain clouds form below the ceiling on very humid days". Is this meant to indicate that it actually rains within the building or just floating water vapor i.e. a "cloud". I'd also suggest that the whole sentence about the "weather system" is an urban legend.

Rackham


 * I was there some years ago and they told us this. I'm not sure that rain actually falls - I doubt it very much - but I could imagine that water vapour might visibly collect up near the ceiling sometimes. The building is truly immense. I think "weather system" is an exaggeration rather than an urban legend. Anyway, the official line is that something meteorological does go on in there, even if it's only a bit of mistiness overhead. &mdash; Trilobite (Talk) 03:01, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I have heard about this "it could rain in there" thing for years and years. I had a friend who went to Space Camp, and they repeated this to him. I would really appreciate finding out if this is an urban legend or not, but to me it seems entirely plausible. -- Jalabi99 06:10, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

According to Boeing's website, http://www.boeing.com/commercial/news/feature/evt_tour.html, the building in which boeing builds the 747, 767, and 777 is the world's largest building by volume, at 472 million cubic feet of space. I do not know if one would consider it to be a single story building, as the VAB is claimed to be. The Boeing building has tunnels underneath it but is essentially one story.

NASA lists the VAB to enclose 129,428,000 cubic feet of space. http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/facilities/vab.html Sean 1 July, 2006

I'm removing the part about a conducting rod being removed from the top of the Saturn V. Saturn V could fit inside the building easily as a whole, and there were no rods protruding from the top of the escape tower. It was the conducting rod on top of the launch umbilical tower and it was lowered by hinges, not removed.130.234.5.138 17:30, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Are the two words "very large" necessary in the first sentence? I took one look at the picture and said "That thing is BIG!" Furthermore, that's what she said. ;-) 152.23.196.162 06:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

date wrong?
Re: When the Space Shuttle program began, it was renamed to the "Vehicle Assembly Building"[5] But some 13 years before this program, Arthur C Clarke's 1968 novelisation of "2001: a Space Odyssey" refers to the structure as the "vehicle assembly building" (part Ii, Chapter 7 - Special Flight, paragraph 2). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.76.88.46 (talk) 13:52, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Main image
I think the main image should be replaced by a larger one of higher quality. I uploaded a processed version of the original, but it could be easily replaced, methinks. --Fl e x (talk/contribs) 17:23, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Use of the high bays
Does anyone have a good source to cite regarding use of the high bays in the VAB for stacking? In particular, the possibility that some of them have been in disrepair, and that recent shuttle mission flows led NASA to accelerate the return to use of high bay 3? The September 21 Space Shuttle Processing Status Report seems to hint at this a bit.... (sdsds - talk) 00:29, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
 * High Bay 3 doors were damaged due to one of the storms of the past year(s). They were doing the big fix (instead of the patching they did last year or something?) and it's not totally finished yet, but they decided the remaining work is so little that they can start using it, while the repair crews finish the job. I read this somewhere on nasaspaceflight.com i think. I'd welcome more accurate sources as well :D --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:37, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Sense of scale
I have a vertical panorama (cell phone camera quality, unfortunately) that gives a pretty good sense of how big the building actually is. I'm not really able to make it look good on the page, but I'll place it here to make it available for possible future use. Tristan (talk) 19:59, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Vertical/Vehicle?
''The 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". When the Space Shuttle program began, it was renamed to the "Vehicle Assembly Building" …''

This is not correct. The V stood for "Vehicle" during the Apollo program. See Peter Ryan's "The Invasion of the Moon", published 1969 (just 3 years after the VAB's completion), which consistently refers to it as the "Vehicle Assembly Building". Is there any contemporary evidence that it was ever referred to as the "Vertical Assembly Building"? If so, the name was changed very early on – long before the Space Shuttle program. Vilĉjo (talk) 00:14, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * updated the section - according to the NASA ref in that section the name was changed in 1965 before the building was even completed. CodeCurmudgeon (talk) 23:34, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

The World's Largest Doors have 7 vertical panels and 4 horizontal panels
"Each door is 456 ft high, has 7 vertical panels and 4 horizontal panels, and takes 45 minutes to completely open or close." - Benjamin Franklin 75.74.157.29 (talk) 19:00, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

How long was it expected to last
My only source is but it may have only been designed to last 10 years ! - Rod57 (talk) 12:12, 30 August 2020 (UTC)