Rubbernecking Building 35’s demolition

Building 35 may have bitten the dust recently, but its demise is all part of a bigger picture.

Rubberneck images of its destruction, below, which took place from Sept. 6 to 14.






Image Credits: NASA/Norah Moran

In the near term, NASA Johnson Space Center’s whitetail deer population is the real winner here. The space that used to occupy Building 35 will return back to nature in the form of green space with some trees.

But there’s more to come.

“Additional buildings aligned with our recently approved master plan will be demolished,” said Joel Walker, Johnson’s director of Center Operations. “We are in the process of making the plan available for employee viewing via an internal website. Any building that is demolished is carefully reviewed for historic significance and goes through outside review for approval, in particular, through the State Historic Preservation Officer and other federal offices.”

A building with a mission (or many of them)
Building 35, known in its heyday as the Mission Simulation Development Facility, was conceptualized in the 1960s for the Apollo Program and designed to support the development and use of crew-training simulators. Building 35, in concert with Building 5, the Jake Garn Mission Simulator and Training Facility, prepared astronaut crews and ground controllers for launch, landing and flight operations, ensuring the success of NASA’s human space exploration missions.

During shuttle, Building 35 housed a one of two Guidance and Navigation Simulators (GNS) located at Johnson. The GNS was a fixed-base simulator comprised of a full-scale replica of the orbiter’s flight deck and a sub-scale replica of the mid-deck. For training, Building 35’s GNS was considered a backup, and it was used for roughly 25 percent of astronaut training sessions.

The history of Building 35 runs deep, reaching from Apollo (1961-1972) to the Apollo Soyuz Test Project (1971-1975) to the Space Shuttle Program (1981-2011) to, finally, Shuttle-Mir (1993-1998). In addition, many astronauts with national name recognition, like Thomas Stafford, Deke Slayton and Sally Ride, all worked and trained in the building.

NASA’s illustrious history—60 years in the making—lives on today in new projects and programs that operate out of different buildings across campus.


Prime crew commanders for the joint U.S.-USSR Apollo-Soyuz Test Project take a break from busy simulations at NASA's Johnson Space Center to enjoy a lighter moment. Cosmonaut Aleksey A. Leonov sticks his head through the Soyuz orbital module mock-up in Building 35, while his American counterpart, astronaut Thomas P. Stafford, looks on. Image Credit: NASA
 

Fun fact
Johnson is home to one of the largest, if not the largest, collection of mid-century modern brutalist architecture in the United States. These are the center’s original precast exposed aggregate faced (PEAF)-paneled buildings of the original master plan. All Johnson’s buildings and structures are managed under the National Historic Preservation Act, which is where consultation with the Texas State Historic Preservation Officer and, at times, the National Park Service, comes in. As of the 50-year survey, Johnson is home to 81 historic properties on-site, at Ellington Field and Sonny Carter Training Facility, which are eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Johnson also boasts two National Historic Landmarks: Buildings 30 and 32.

 

Catherine Ragin Williams
NASA Johnson Space Center