impossible deadline. Moyer, a World War II B-17
fighter pilot-turned-architect, was the project
manager for both the Vehicle Assembly Building
and the Launch Control Center. His firm, the
Max O. Urbahn architectural firm in New York,
led the consortium awarded the contract by
NASA in the early 1960s. Construction started in
1963 after much design work.
The building’s award-winning legacy is clear
to Moyer.
“It’s the center of our space program as far
as the government’s concerned,” he notes
with a nod to commercial launch programs
in a telephone interview from his Vero Beach
residence. “The outfit I worked for still flies out
of the VAB.”
He visited Merritt Island to view the site well
before September 1961, when NASA began purchasing
the land. Moyer arrived via Jacksonville
in a jeep driven by an Army Corps engineer.
“There was nothing there but alligators at the
time, not one structure on the site,” he says.
“The overall challenge was that President
Kennedy insisted we go to the moon by 1970,”
Moyer says. “At the peak, we had 250 architects
and engineers working on it with four major
firms and also specialty architects. There was a
lot of overtime and night work.”
WORLD’S FOREMOST LAUNCH SITE
John Tribe, 86, sailed the Queen Mary in January
1961 from his native England to Titusville to
work as a propulsions engineer with NASA.
For the next 43 years, he would spend days
and nights at the VAB as a contract engineer
with North American Aviation, which became
Rockwell International.
“The VAB is iconic,” Tribe says in a telephone
interview from his home on Merritt Island. He
has volunteered as a tour guide at the space
center since he retired as an engineering
director in 2004. “People know what it is and
what it’s still doing. We went from a swamp to
having the foremost launch site in the world,
and I’m proud of my involvement with it over
these 60 years.”
In April 1965, Tribe was on hand along with
hundreds of workers eager to sign their names
on the close-out beam at the 500-ft. level atop
the building.
The building not only served rocket assemblies
but also had many offices, including Tribe’s,
MOMENTS IN SPACE HISTORY
JOHN TRIBE
Retired propulsions engineer John Tribe volunteers as a tour guide at the space center.
NASA
Kurt Debus, Kennedy Space Center's first director, adds his name to thousands of others on
the 38-foot-long steel b >> eam during the VAB's topping off ceremonies on April 14, 1965.
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