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ASCE Florida Section: American Society of Civil Engineers’ National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark (NHCEL)
By Kathleen Ruvarac, PE, PAST PRESIDENT, FLORIDA SECTION, ASCE/HISTORY & HERITAGE CHAIR
On Jan. 20, 2020, the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Merritt Island was dedicated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. KSC Director Robert Cabana and Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Kevin Thibault were a part of the dedication ceremony as well as many officers and members of the Florida Section and Region 5.
The application process took over two years, and NASA's Historic Preservation Office (HPO) staff were instrumental in providing the agency's support for the application and planning of the dedication ceremony. This was the first American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark (NHCEL) dedicated in the state of Florida since the Bicentennial in 1976.
Prior to the VAB, there were only two NHCELs dedicated and installed in Florida. One marker can be found at the Castillo de San Marcos fort in St. Augustine (dated 1975). Located on the western shore of Matanzas Bay in St. Augustine, the Castillo de San Marcos (Spanish for “St. Mark’s Castle”) is the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. It was designed by the Spanish engineer Ignacio Daza, with construction beginning in 1672. Construction of the core of the current fortress was completed in 1695.
The second ASCE NHCEL marker can be found in Historic King’s Road Park located in Jacksonville (dated 1976). The King's Road was a road built by the British in their colony of East Florida. It stretched from the St. Mary’s River, the border between East Florida and Georgia, to the south of New Smyrna and was mostly completed by 1773.
The third ASCE NHCEL marker can be found at NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building Entrance.
Vehicle Assembly Building Construction
National Historic Civil Engineering SignificanceApollo Program, Space Shuttle Program. Future use includes the Journey to Mars Program. It has also earned its place on the National Registry of Historic Places.
Design Civil Engineer: Anton Tedesko; Construction by Army Corps of Engineers
Uniqueness: When constructed (1966), the VAB was:
The largest building in the world by volume at 129,428,000 cubic feet
The largest single-story building at 525 ft tall and 518 ft wide
The tallest building in Florida (until 1973). It still is the tallest building in the US outside of an urban area.
Made up of 65,000 cubic yards of concrete and its frame was constructed from 98,590 tons of steel. It stands atop a support base of 4,225 steel pilings driven 164 feet into bedrock.
Owner: NASA
Date Construction: Completed in 1966 (59 years old)
Plaque on site is viewable by the public
In 1963, NASA contracted the Morrison-Knudsen company to design and build the VAB. MorrisonKnudsen designed and constructed major infrastructure throughout the world and was one of the consortiums of firms that built the Hoover Dam, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, the VAB, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and many other large projects of American infrastructure.
Located on Florida's Atlantic coast, the building was constructed to withstand hurricanes and tropical storms. Construction began with driving the first steel foundation piles on August 2, 1963. The building cost was approximately $100 million to complete. It was part of NASA's massive effort to send astronauts to the moon for the Apollo Program. The building was designed to accommodate a fully assembled Saturn V rocket and housed the Saturn launch vehicles between 1966 and 1975 and in 1980, the Space Shuttle. In 1966, The American Society of Civil Engineers named Launch Complex 39, of which the VAB was an integral part, as the outstanding project of the year.
Other Unique Features Of The VAB
The VAB is also home to the largest American flag, a 209-foot-tall, 110-footwide star spangled banner painted on the side of the building. A 12,300-squarefoot NASA logo also adorns the side of the massive facility.
The American flag painted on the building was the largest in the world when added in 1976 as part of United States Bicentennial celebrations, along with the star logo of the anniversary, later replaced by the NASA insignia in 1998. The tallest portion of the VAB is called the high bay. It encloses four vertical corridors, each with a door 456 feet high. The doors are the largest in the world and take about 45 minutes to completely open or close. It is the largest vehicle integration facility in the space industry, with connectivity to KSC’s launch control centers and access to vertical launch pads.
National Significance Of This Landmark
The objectives of the NASA Civil Space Research Program were defined in 1958 and reiterated in NASA’s 2014 Strategic Plan and in NASA’s SocioEconomic Impact Report prepared in April 2013. It is impossible to fully quantify or measure how the Space program has impacted the world, but it has been established that the first space vehicles would not have been built without the ingenuity of the engineers and scientists who designed the VAB and Launch Complex 39A.
