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National Aeronautics and Space Administration Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center Houston, Texas 77058 AC 713 483-5111

Rh James Hartsfield Release No.: 90-039

SPACE STATION NEUTRAL BUOYANCY LAB CONSTRUCTION SET FOR DECEMBER

It will weigh more than 1 billion pounds, have walls of 12-foot thick concrete, an eight-foot thick bottom, and it will make its inhabitants feel lighter than a feather.

Workers will begin digging a 400,000 cubic-foot hole on the grounds of the Johnson Space Center in December as they start construction of the new Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL), a facility that may be as crucial to the success of Space Station Freedom as the launch pad.

"The only way that we can see that you can prove you can assemble Space Station Freedom in orbit," said Vern Hammersley, chief of the Man-Systems Division's Facilities Operations Branch, "is to do it in the water first."

Simulating weightlessness on Earth in enough quantity to practice assembling Freedom, or even a few parts of Freedom, means thinking big. And the NBL is a lesson in large, said Bill Roeh, the facility's project manager from the Facility Development Division.

The pool will be 60 feet deep, 135 feet wide and 235 feet long. The building that will surround it could hold a football field sans one end zone, and its ceiling will reach almost as high as nine-story Bldg. 1, with a 10-ton crane that can traverse its length.

"The size has been the challenge," Roeh said. “Our design team has really enjoyed working on ail the unusual aspects of it. It's been a set of new frontiers and has expanded their engineering skills."

The NBL is the first building at JSC designed specifically as a neutral buoyancy facility. All past such pools, including the current Weightless Environment Training Facility (WETF), have been housed in hand-me-down buildings modified to accept them.