NASA RELEASE 61-207

MANNED SPACE FLIGHT LABORATORY LOCATION

The Manned Space Flight Center location study is completed. James E. Webb, Administrator of NASA, announced today the completion of the study to determine the location of the agency's new $60,000,000 Manned Space Flight Laboratory. The facility was authorized by Congress for initiation in the current Fiscal Year. The laboratory will be located in Houston, Texas on 1,000 acres of land to be made available to the government by Rice University. The land, in Harris County, borders on Clear Lake and on the Houston Light and Power Company Salt Water Canal.

The Manned Space Flight Laboratory will be the command center for the Manned Lunar Landing mission and all follow-on manned space flight missions. It will be utilized to design, develop, evaluate and test the spacecraft for Project Apollo as well as all of its subsystems and to train the crew that will fly these missions. The FY 62 appropriation provided funds for the development of a site, and construction of 4 integrated facilities: (1) a flight project facility, (2) an equipment evaluation laboratory, (3) a flight operations facility and (4) an environmental testing lab.

Mr. Webb pointed out that the recently announced expansion of the Atlantic Missile Range at Cape Canaveral, Florida, as the launch site for the very large space vehicle to be constructed, and with the establishment of a fabrication facility at the Michoud plant near the mouth of the Mississippi River at New Orleans, the location of the new laboratory at Houston would facilitate the establishment of an integrated facilities system connected by deep water transportation and capable of handling the large spacecraft and launch vehicles in the Apollo manned lunar landing projects.

This grouping of the facilities in a region permitting out-of-door work for most of the year provides flexibility and a capability of expansion to meet the needs of a very large vehicle which present projections indicate will be required for heavier payloads and deeper penetration into space beyond the moon to the planets.