Marshall Space Flight Center’s newest addition was unveiled today during a ribbon cutting ceremony celebrating the new state of the art ‘green’ facility where over 400 employees now work.
“The building we’re celebrating today is 4221, which houses those who will be working on future generations systems,” said Director of Marshall Space Flight Center, Jody Singer. “Things that will be habitats, landers, and what it takes to get us into deep space and help us learn and work and survive.”
Singer says the new building is not only environmentally more efficient, but also energy efficient, and is expected to mean a cost savings of about $80,000 annually.
“It saves the tax payers dollars,” said Singer. “We expect everytime we have a building we replace, it saves us about 15% each year which can be a big difference when you’re trying to go to space and do things no one has done before.”
“The cost for operating the building are half of what our older building was and we’re holding even more people than we held in our old building,” said Sam Ortega who is manager of the Partnerships Office at Marshall.
Ortega says the new facility is fostering more collaboration among teams.
“Right now, we’re in our collaboration space which allows us an open environment to have conversations with regards to new technologies we’re going to need or new ideas that are going to be able to solve the problems coming up as we try to put boots on the moon in 2424,” said Ortega.
