Check out this infographic about NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) – click the image for a larger view.

Now that the Space Shuttle program is over, NASA is remodeling the VAB where they were built. It’s a huge building, one of the largest in the world. How huge? Here’s some info to help put it into perspective:

  • The VAB has the volume of three and a half Empire State Buildings – it is 526 feet (160.3 m) tall, 716 feet (218.2 m) long and 518 feet (157.9 m) wide. It covers 8 acres (3 ha), and encloses 129,428,000 cubic feet (3,665,000 m3) of space.
  • Put another way, it would take 250 billion ping pong balls to fill the VAB. That’s 791 ping pong balls for every person in the United States.
  • The structure was completed in 1966 for the assembly of the Apollo/Saturn V moon rocket, the largest rocket made by humans.
  • During the Apollo program it was referred to as the “Vertical Assembly Building”. When the Space Shuttle program began, it was renamed to the “Vehicle Assembly Building”.
  • The VAB has the largest doors in the world — 456 feet high. When they’re wide open, they take 45 minutes to close.
  • The building has at least 10,000 tons of air conditioning equipment, including 125 ventilators on the roof supported by four large air handlers (four cylindrical structures west of the building) to keep moisture under control.
  • The interior volume of the building is so vast that it has its own weather, including “rain clouds forming below the ceiling on very humid days”, which the moisture reduction systems are designed to minimize.
  • The building was constructed to withstand hurricanes and tropical storms with a foundation consisting of 30,000 cubic yards of concrete and 4,225 steel rods driven 160 feet into limestone bedrock.
  • It is the largest single story building in the world, and until 1974 was the tallest building in Florida.
  • Today, it is the tallest building in the USA outside of urbanized cities like New York and Cincinnati.
  • The American Flag painted on the front of the VAB is 209 feet high. The blue field is the size of an NBA basketball court with stars six feet across.
  • As for the VAB’s output, that includes 13 Saturn V rockets (used in Apollo and Skylab missions) and Space Shuttles that flew 135 missions.


Aerial view of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center

Filed under: Manned Space Flight