Cindy Donze Manto Livres

"Originally known simply as Mississippi Field Operations, Stennis Space Center arose from the dissolution of two towns and several surrounding communities that had served the lumber industry since the 1800s. Its sole purpose was to static test the free world's most powerful rockets after they arrived by barge via the Pearl River. Spurred on by an intense Cold War race to the moon, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) battled mud, mosquitoes, and snakes as it cleared the way for its colossal test stands for the Apollo program. When completed, the A & B test complexes towered between 200 and 400 feet high, the tallest structures in the state of Mississippi in 1965. Dr. Wernher von Braun, the first director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, was fond of saying that 'to get to the moon, we will have to go through Mississippi to get there!' Today, Stennis Space Center is NASA's largest propulsion text complex and also home to a diverse collection of resident agencies, federal, military, private, local, national, and international. Cindy Donze Manto ... has assembled a compilation of photographic images and maps culled from an array of libraries, museums, private collections, and NASA"--Back cover

After an auspicious beginning as a royal land grant from French king Louis XV to a wealthy French citizen of New Orleans in 1763, the land Michoud Assembly Facility occupies remained in private ownership until 1940, when it was sold to the US government. Prior to World War II, the site was used to grow sugar, hunt muskrat, and build railroad and telephone lines. In 1941, the world’s largest industrial site was built, covering 43 acres of unobstructed, low-humidity, air-cooled space under one roof to construct C-46 cargo planes. The Korean War required the assembly of Sherman and Patton tanks there, while the space race compelled the design and assembly of the colossal Saturn I, IB, and V rocket boosters for the Apollo program that reported directly to Dr. Wernher von Braun. The 1970s saw the fabrication of the enormous external tank for the Space Shuttle program. Today, Michoud Assembly Facility continues to support the US space program by building major components for the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (or MPCV).