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The Vehicle Assembly Building (originally the Vertical Assembly Building), or VAB, is a large building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, designed to assemble large pre-manufactured space vehicle components, such as the massive Saturn V, the Space Shuttle and the Space Launch System, and stack them vertically onto one of three mobile launcher platforms used by NASA.
In this January 1966 image (restored today from a faded 4"x5" NASA transparency) these structures are brand new, and launch tower #1 is being moved by a crawler transporter to the VAB for erection of a "dummy" Saturn V facilities test vehicle, which will be rolled out to the pad later in the year, but not launched.
SA-500F was assembled in the Vehicle Assembly Building where it was mated to S-IC-F on March 28 and S-IVB-F the next day. SA-500F was completed in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), tested for stability against swaying in the wind, [35] and rolled out to the launch pad May 25, 1966, on Mobile Launcher-1 (ML-1). S-II-F/D arrives at MSFC.
Months before a launch, the three stages of the Saturn V launch vehicle and the components of the Apollo spacecraft were brought inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and assembled, in one of four bays, into a 363-foot (111 m)-tall space vehicle on one of three Mobile Launchers (ML).
In the time frame from 1969 to 1971 the cost of launching a Saturn V Apollo mission was between $185,000,000 to $189,000,000, [1] [2] of which $110 million were used for the production of the vehicle [68] (equivalent to $1.18 billion–$1.2 billion in 2023).
SA-500F was first stacked on Mobile Launcher 1 in the Vehicle Assembly Building High Bay 1 up to the Instrument Unit on March 30, 1966. The Apollo Command/Service Module facilities verification boilerplate was added on May 2, 1966. [3] The 500F rolls out from the VAB on May 25, 1966. 500F was rolled out to Pad A on May 25, 1966.
The crawlers traveled along the 5.5 and 6.8 km (3.4 and 4.2 mi) Crawlerways, to LC-39A and LC-39B, respectively, at a maximum speed of 1.6 kilometers per hour (1 mph) loaded, or 3.2 km/h (2 mph) unloaded. [8] [11] The average trip time from the VAB along the Crawlerway to Launch Complex 39 is about five hours. [1]
The Mobile Launcher Platform-1 on top of a crawler-transporter. A mobile launcher platform (MLP), also known as mobile launch platform, is a structure used to support a large multistage space vehicle which is assembled (stacked) vertically in an integration facility (e.g. the Vehicle Assembly Building) and then transported by a crawler-transporter (CT) to a launch pad.