The 138-foot rocket stage lying outside looks like it fell from the sky. It was built for a moon mission that never flew. S-IC-15 would have generated 7.5 million pounds of thrust as the first stage of Apollo 19. The mission was cancelled in 1970. Fred Haise, the Apollo 13 astronaut born in Biloxi, would have commanded it. He helped bring the stage here in 2016.
That stage was built thirty miles east, at Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East. You can't go there. NASA has assembled the country's largest rockets inside it since the early 1960s — Saturn V first stages, Shuttle external tanks, now SLS cores for Artemis — in a building whose floor covers 43 acres. When a stage is finished, it leaves on a barge through the Louisiana marsh, down the Intracoastal Waterway, because nothing that size moves any other way. Michoud builds them. Stennis proves them.
Every Saturn V that reached the moon was test-fired thirty minutes west at Stennis Space Center. NASA announced formation of the Mississippi Test Facility on October 25, 1961 — the Apollo motors were too loud for Marshall Space Flight Center's existing stands near Huntsville. They needed isolation, and they found it in the high terrace bordering the East Pearl River. Before the first test stand was poured, five towns were erased: Gainesville, Logtown, Napoleon, Santa Rosa, Westonia, plus the northern portion of Pearlington. The effort acquired 3,200 parcels — 786 residences, 16 churches, 19 stores, three schools. The 13,500-acre test area sits inside a 125,000-acre acoustical buffer zone. The silence of vanished towns still doing its work.
Inside the 72,000-square-foot building: the Apollo 4 command module and a moon rock from Apollo 15. You can touch it. Bus tours reach the test stands where RS-25 engines are being certified for Artemis. The A-1 Test Stand was renamed the Fred Haise Test Stand in March 2020 — the astronaut's name on the place that would have certified his ride.
Free to get in. Bus tours cost extra and sell out. Book ahead.
- ·Every Saturn V that flew to the moon was test-fired at Stennis Space Center, 30 minutes west.
- ·The S-IC-15 first stage outside — 138 feet long, 7.5 million pounds of thrust — was built at Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East, 30 miles away, then barged here on the Intracoastal Waterway.
- ·Michoud, a 43-acre building and one of the largest enclosed spaces in the world, is closed to the public. Stennis is where you see the product.
- ·The S-IC-15 would have launched Apollo 19, cancelled in 1970. Fred Haise, the Apollo 13 astronaut born in Biloxi, would have commanded it. He helped bring the stage here in 2016.
- ·Inside: the Apollo 4 command module and a moon rock from Apollo 15 you can touch.
- ·Bus tours visit the test stands where RS-25 engines are still being certified for Artemis moon missions.
- ·Open daily. Free general admission. Bus tours have a separate ticket — book ahead, they sell out.
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