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Photo Diary: NASA Stennis Space Center, Mississippi [1]
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Date: 2022-10-19
The NASA John C Stennis facility in Mississippi is where NASA develops and tests its rocket engines. Not as big as the Cape or Houston, but still has some cool stuff on display.
For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and travel around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visit. I am currently on my way back to Florida for the winter.
When President John F Kennedy announced in 1961 that the United States would begin a program to land men on the Moon, the US space program had a grand total of 15 minutes of manned spaceflight, and no rockets anywhere near powerful enough to leave Earth orbit. NASA had to painstakingly lay out a systematic plan, in which Project Mercury would test basic space survival systems, Project Gemini would research orbital maneuvering and docking, and finally Project Apollo would carry humans to the Moon and back. Each would require new rocket engines, and NASA would need a place to test them.
So, in May 1963, workers began clearing a patch of forest not far from Biloxi MS where the Mississippi Test Operations would be built. (In 1988 it would be renamed the John C Stennis Space Center, in honor of the Mississippi Senator who was instrumental in getting it built.) Close enough to major NASA contractors in New Orleans and Florida but remote enough to be safe if there was an accident, this facility would be responsible for testing all of NASA’s rocket engine designs.
The task would keep 6,000 contract employees busy for three years, but in April 1966 work was finished. The facility had three massive test stands, each towering 200 feet tall and capable of withstanding over a million pounds of pressure at 6,000 degrees. There was also a system of canals over seven miles long, used to move the huge rocket stages and their engines by ship from the fabrication plants in Louisiana to the test site, and then on to Cape Canaveral for assembly. It was the largest construction project in Mississippi’s history.
All three of the original test stands, used to test engines for the immense Saturn 1B and Saturn V Moon rockets, are still functioning and still in use. When Apollo ended and was replaced by the Space Shuttle in 1975, the new liquid-fueled Space Shuttle Main Engine prototypes were test-fired at Stennis, and for the next 34 years, every Space Shuttle engine that flew was tested here first. And after the Challenger accident, the new redesigned solid rocket boosters were also proof-fired at Stennis.
Today, parts of the Stennis facility are used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Navy, and the US Geological Survey. Rolls-Royce and Lockheed-Martin also have engine-testing laboratories here. The INFINITY Science Center acts as the public visitors center for Stennis. There is a display of space hardware here, and during the tourist season bus tours leave for the nearby Space Center, where visitors can see the engine test stands. In 2007, construction began on a new stand to be used for testing engines in NASA’s Space Launch System that will take the Orion spacecraft back to the Moon. The new tower is 300 feet tall and uses a vacuum chamber to simulate altitudes up to 100,000 feet.
Some photos from a visit.
The museum
Saturn V first stage
The business end
F-1 engine, used in the Saturn V first stage
H-1 rocket engine, used in the Saturn 1B
Lunar Module trainer
Apollo 4 Command Module, used for an unmanned test flight
Lunar Module Ascent Engine
Apollo spacesuit and equipment
Lunar sample from Apollo 15
Mockup of International Space Station Module “Destiny”
Inside the Destiny module
Rolls Royce Trent 1000 jet engine, used in the Boeing 787
Space food. This is alleged to be “cauliflower and cheese”.
The Museum has a Nature Path outside
This poor snail cooked itself trying to cross the walkway
US Navy riverine training boat
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