Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday, Rep. Mo Brooks (AL-05), along with Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Marshall Space Flight Center Director Patrick Scheuermann, participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for NASA’s latest facility, which will house the Space Launch System (SLS) Program Office in Huntsville, AL.
Building 4220 is the home to 400 engineers who are developing SLS, which offers unsurpassed heavy-lift capability and unrivaled payload volume, essential to human missions to explore asteroids and human missions to Mars.
In his remarks at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Brooks applauded the success of SLS and the new energy-efficient building that will house its Program Office:
“The heavy-lift capability that we will potentially have once this is up and rolling is just a tremendous advantage for our country vis-à-vis all of our international competitors. And remarkably, for any kind of federal government program, SLS is five months ahead of schedule, on budget, and recently passed the Critical Design Review—all unprecedented feats for a program of this size, so thank you for what you are doing. And on the building side, to have put together a building that is going to decrease maintenance and operations costs by 65%, decrease utility costs by 35%, on the budget constraints we face in Washington, DC, right now, that is very, very impressive.”
“I will give you my pledge that as long as I am able, I will do everything I can to help ensure that this building is always fully staffed, that SLS is always fully funded, and we can do the things that need to be done to make sure that America is forever number one in space because it is that American exceptionalism that helps set us apart from everybody else. And I’m so proud of what you do here at Marshall, the capabilities you have shown in the past, and the capabilities that you are going to show in the future. So thank you for allowing me to be a part of Building 4220 ribbon cutting.”
The new facility is a replacement for Building 4202, which is over 50 years old and will soon be demolished. The new building was built for roughly half the cost of refurbishing the old building, and it is Marshall’s seventh 
building to be Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified, cutting operation costs by 65% and utility costs by 35%. Following the retirement of Building 4202, furniture from that building was donated to local schools in need.
After the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Brooks and Sessions toured NASA’s Propulsion Research and Development Laboratory (PRDL). Marshall’s PRDL houses state-of-the-art systems integration and thrust vector control test labs. In this facility, rocket propulsion designers can run real-time launch vehicle simulations of SLS and other vehicles. PRDL has over 108,000 square feet of space and hosts 26 labs.
MEDIA RELEASE/CONGRESSMAN MO BROOKS/LAUREN VANDIVER
