Our friend Ken Cameron is an astronaut who flew the Space Shuttle three times, once as pilot and twice as commander. He arranged a tour of the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Most have not heard of it, but it is famous for the place where Saturn rockets, shuttle external tanks and many other NASA things were made. Today it is being utilized to assemble the Space Launch System (SLS, Artemis) series of rockets which will be taking us to the moon and hopefully beyond. The first unmanned launch is scheduled for next year.

We had a guided tour given by a very knowledgeable person who was able to answer many questions. The facility is enormous, over 400 acres inside the building. They are nearing the final assembly of the Artemis I rocket and we were able to see it inside the building. One of the things that they have already completed it an exercise to move a test article (called Pathfinder, same dimensions and weight as Artemis) on Pegasus, the custom barge to Huntsville, Stennis Space Center and to Cape Canaveral to test the handling systems at all those places. Pathfinder was sitting out and we were able to get a nice group photo along with our guide Erin.