HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Four years after a brutal Washington budget fight over NASA's future led to hundreds of aerospace layoffs in Huntsville, the Marshall Space Flight Center is ready to cut the ribbon on a $39 million office building dedicated to its new mission in human space flight.
On Wednesday, Aug. 13, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Mobile) and U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) will help NASA officially open the 110,000-square-foot Building 4220. It is in the southeast corner of Marshall's administrative complex at the intersection of Rideout and Neal roads and Labathe Avenue on Redstone Arsenal.
The new building will house 400 engineers and technologists working on NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS). That's the new deep-space rocket Congress forced on the Obama administration in 2010 after the administration canceled NASA's Constellation rocket program for being behind schedule and over budget. U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Tuscaloosa), who is not scheduled to be at the ribbon-cutting, was critical in assuring that development of SLS came to Huntsville, which has been NASA's lead propulsion center since Wernher von Braun.
SLS is now moving from design to construction - with Obama administration support - and will launch the first time in 2017, according to the current schedule. The long-term consequences of the end of the space shuttle program and the fight over NASA's role in human spaceflight are still shaking out.
The new building was designed for energy and water efficiency and has earned LEED Silver Certification. It follows modern practices by omitting most private offices in favor of open design with cubicles, conference rooms and collaboration spaces. A popular feature with workers already in the building is a white noise generator that muffles neighboring conversations.
The building replaces Building 4202, a 1960s' era construction that Marshall Operations Director Steve Doering says cost between $600,000 and $800,000 a year to maintain. "That's just fixing stuff that breaks," Doeing said this week. This week, schools and other government agencies claimed used - but still usable - furniture from Building 4202.
The cost to refurbish 4202 was estimated at $76 million, Doering said, mainly because of asbestos throughout the inside. The building will come down, and a virtual duplicate of Building 4220 will rise in its place, another modern construction technique that saves design costs. Doeing said Marshall will end up with two new energy-efficient buildings for basically the cost of refurbishing one old building.
(Updated Aug. 7 at 1 p.m. to clarify that the White House canceled Constellation for being over budget and behind schedule)