Michoud Assembly Facility

Michoud Assembly Facility is located in the industrial area of New Orleans. During the 1960s, Chrysler used the facility to make S-I and S-IB stages, and Boeing used it to manufacture S-IC stages. Today Lockheed Martin uses it to manufacture Shuttle external tanks; additional information about the ET is available on KSC's site.

Lockheed Martin's Michoud website is here, and their "history" page is here.

Google Maps has some nice imagery. The vertical assembly building is just to the upper right of center and the water tower is just to the lower right of center (easiest to find by following its shadow). Direct link to aerial imagery of the S-IC stage.

"Michoud" is pronounced as a pirate might refer to his footwear: "me shoe."

We visited during the summer of 2005 (before Hurricane Katrina hit the area). Sitting just inside the fence on a corner of the property, the S-IC has a small parking lot dedicated to it ("Saturn 5 visitors only. Booster observation 30 minute time limit"). All of the pictures of the booster and the manufacturing plant were taken from the outside of the fence. Thus, either the fence will be visible in the picture, or the picture was taken with the camera lens up against the fence (and you may see the diagonal wires of the fence in the corners of the pictures).