 The Saturn V rocket that took Apollo astronauts to the moon is a massive rocket, standing 363 feet tall. And while it was weatherproof when fully assembled, it needed some protection from the elements during construction. And that meant it needed a garage of sorts. That garage is the vehicle assembly building. A building so large its shadow is clearly visible from space. Hello everyone, I'm Amy. This is The Vintage Space, my little corner of the internet where we discuss all things mid-century that I just love. And a lot of that is Apollo-era space history. And the VAB is one of those things that everyone kind of knows about, but no one really knows its history. So let's briefly talk about it. When America first started exploring the potential of rockets in the wake of the Second World War, it was with recovered V-2s. After Werner von Braun and his team, who'd built the rocket for the German military, surrendered to the US Army, they were imported to the United States along with train cars full of parts, rockets, and plans to build more. I dig into this story in a lot more detail in my first book, Breaking the Chains of Gravity. So if you'd like to know more, check out the link in the description below. This site for the Army to start learning the intricacies of this rocket and how it could fold this knowledge into a new rocket program was the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. Renamed the White Sands Missile Range in 1958. Originally founded in 1945, the desert site was chosen for its privacy and isolation, a place within the continental United States where the Army could safely launch rockets in the name of learning and understanding this new technology. But the rockets quickly outgrew White Sands. They were flying higher and further. In one instance, landing in Juarez, Mexico, nearly starting an international incident. The Army needed more room. The Long Range Proving Ground Committee was thus created to find a new site. It considered possible locations in northern Washington along the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and near El Centro, California, where the range would extend down the coast of Baja. But both sites were passed over in favor of the Naval Air Station at Cape Canaveral in Florida. This site had 15,000 acres of land, a favorable climate year round and a range bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Rockets could fire safely over the water and there was still great access to the site by land and sea for delivering parts or whole rockets. On May 11th, 1949, President Truman established the Joint Long Range Proving Ground at Cape Canaveral and put to the two-year-old Air Force in control. On July 31st, 1950, a two-stage V-2 bumper rocket was the first missile launched from the site. A little over a decade later, the state of the art of rocketry had advanced significantly. The U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy each had missile programs under development that had seen a mix of successes and failures. And these missiles were finding a second use as the first space launch vehicles. After the Soviet Union put Sputnik in orbit in 1957, there was a rush in America to bring the fledgling pieces of space exploration under one umbrella, which ultimately led to NASA's creation. The new space agency earmarked the Army's Redstone and the Air Force's Atlas as the immediate launch vehicles for the inaugural Mercury program. But NASA was already looking ahead at its longer-term plans with a purpose-built rocket designed by Wernher van Brown and his team. This new rocket family was called Saturn. The Saturn family, so named because it came after the Jupiter rocket family, had multiple iterations. The Saturn 1 was the first version, the Saturn 1B added a more powerful upper stage, and the Saturn 5 was the version powerful enough to launch a mission to the moon. This rocket was eventually approved for Apollo, which meant that Cape Canaveral was about to be home to the largest and most powerful rocket in existence. In anticipation of missions launching to the moon, the site at Canaveral was expanded. In 1962, NASA purchased 80,000 acres on Merritt Island to build ground support equipment and new launch pads. At the same time, the space agency also began awarding contracts to various companies to build the rocket. The contract for the S1 first stage went to Boeing, the S2 second stage to North American aviation, and the S4B third stage to Douglas aircraft. Spacecraft contracts, too, were awarded to multiple contractors. The command and service module to North American and the lunar module to Grumman. Each piece would be built in a different part of the country, meaning they would need to be assembled in Florida before launch. And that meant NASA also needed to build a garage for its growing moon port. Assembling the Apollo stack right on the launch pad was never seriously considered. There were too many pre-launch tests to run, and having pieces of the rocket open to the elements was bound to be problematic. Not only does Florida have hurricanes, but the coastal air is also salty and speeds up corrosion of metal. The Saturn V thus needed to be housed safely in a building before being transported to the launch pad. Transporting was another question. One option was for a long building that would allow the rocket to be assembled horizontally before it was popped upright for launch. This was how the Soviets managed the Soyuz rocket. But because the Saturn V had German V2 heritage, it also inherited the German's method of assembling the rocket upright and transporting it vertically to the launch pad. This was of course easier with a smaller V2 than the massive Saturn V, but there were other considerations. There was some concern that the act of writing a fully assembled Saturn V would put damaging strains on the joints connecting the stages. Assembling it upright was ultimately safer, and building it directly on the mobile launch platform meant once finished it could be transported to the launch pad, fueled, and ready to go. The vertical assembly building was thus born, though it was renamed the vehicle assembly building on February 3rd of 1965 in anticipation of a future where other rockets and spacecraft would be assembled there, not necessarily vertically. Designing the VAB felt four New York firms collectively known as Orsam. Max Urban oversaw architectural aspects. Roberts and Schaefer covered the structural elements. Sealy, Stevenson, Value, and Nect were in charge of all civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering considerations, and Moran, Proctor, Musor, and Rutledge were tasked with laying the building's foundations. Before they could break ground, the firms had to think through the VAB's unique challenges. Acoustic pressure and vibrations from a Saturn V launching nearby was one. The VAB would have to be relatively close to the launch pad to avoid transporting a full rocket miles and miles down the road. They determined three miles was the right distance, but even that far away, the acoustic pressure of about 145 decibels would have the power to damage the building's skin. Another concern was the building's shape. A simple square building, tall enough to house a Saturn V, risked turning into a box kite during a heavy storm. But none of these problems were insurmountable. To ground the building, designers chose a pile foundation with an array of cross-bracing beams to make it structurally sound against adverse weather. Building with insulated aluminum panels fastened to steel girders would protect the VAB from nearby acoustic forces. As for the functionality inside, designers determined the best use of space was to build low bays where each piece of the rocket could be received and checked out before moving each segment into the high bay and stacked in one of the four integration bays. Because the workflow would always be in flux, there could be no permanent structures on the ground level and lots of free space and transfer aisles between bays. That was paramount. So everything was done from the top down. 71 cranes and hoists, including two 250 ton bridge cranes, were installed such that they could move the rocket stages between bays and stack them all without having anything on the ground. Each of the four high bay doors was 456 feet tall, so the 336 foot rocket could easily clear it well atop the mobile launch platform. NASA signed off on the first stage of the VAB's construction towards the end of 1962 and the final design was approved on September 23rd of 1963. Like the overall pace of the Apollo program, construction of the VAB was quick. Site preparation began on October 31st when the area was dredged and the land cleared for construction. The first foundation piles were driven into the ground on August 2nd of 1963. More than 4,000 piles totaling 1.4 million cubic feet of concrete later, the VAB's foundation was completed in May of 1964. From there, the building was erected from about 45,000 metric tons of structural steel. On April 14th of 1965, the last element was in place, a beam that was painted white and signed by all the NASA core of engineers, employees, and all construction workers who had a hand in the VAB's construction. By the end, the price tag had reached $117 million. The final beam is of course still there. A sub-roof was eventually added to protect the workers from falling concrete as the building began to age. And if you can, and if you know the right people, you can get up into that sub-roof and see the beam. And if you can get onto the roof, you get an amazing view of the cape. It's a really fascinating building, and so much history has happened inside those giant walls. And there's of course more to the engineering. But I hope you guys enjoyed this quick look at how it came to be. That's gonna do it for me for today, you guys. I want to remind you that both of my books, Fighting for Space and Breaking the Chains of Gravity, are available however you like to consume books. I've got links for both in the description below. I also want to say a very special thank you to my Patreon supporters and YouTube members. You guys truly make all the difference in the world. I would not be able to continue creating content without each and every one of you. So thank you so much. Thank you guys so much for spending a little bit of your time with me today, and I will see you next time.