page_title: Swamp Works
section_title: Swamp Works Facility
hierarchical_section_title: Swamp Works / Swamp Works Facility
caption_attribution_description: English: Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin speaking with NASA senior technologist Rob Mueller about the lunar/Martian/asteroid mining robot RASSOR (Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot) that was developed at the NASA KSC Swamp Works. Photo taken at the KSC Hazard Field for lunar lander tests at the north end of the KSC Shuttle Landing Facility, November 3, 2014. NASA photographer: John B. (Ben) Smegelsky.
context_page_description: The Swamp Works is a lean-development, rapid innovation environment at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. It was founded in 2012, when four laboratories in the Surface Systems Office were merged into an enlarged facility with a modified philosophy for rapid technology development. Those laboratories are the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab, the Electrostatics and Surface Physics Lab, the Applied Chemistry Lab, and the Life Support and Habitation Systems team. The first two of these are located inside the main Swamp Works building, while the other two use the facility although their primary work is located elsewhere. The team developed the Swamp Works operating philosophy from Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works, including the "14 Rules of Management", from the NASA development shops of Wernher von Braun, and from the innovation culture of Silicon Valley. The team prototypes space technologies rapidly to learn early in the process how to write better requirements, enabling them to build better products, rapidly, and at reduced cost.
context_section_description: The Swamp Works' main facility is the high bay in KSC's Engineering Development Lab, which was formerly the Astronaut Training Building during the NASA Apollo program. The building is where Apollo astronauts practiced working with the Lunar Modules for lunar landings and extravehicular activities. During the Space Shuttle era it was used as a destination for bus tours from the KSC Visitor Complex. After the visitor complex decided it no longer needed the facility, it was handed back to NASA and was renovated for Swamp Works. The high bay was furnished with a lunar soil testing facility, the "Big Bin", which is thought to be the world's largest indoor, climate controlled lunar regolith chamber and contains 120 tons of BP-1 simulated lunar soil. The simulated soil is a finely crushed basalt from Black Point, Arizona, that has mechanical properties matching lunar soil. The facility has four 3D printers and an adjacent machine shop with lathes, drill presses, a CNC Router, and other equipment to enable rapid iterative prototyping. The facility also includes an Innovation Space where employees are encouraged to work informally in the upstairs loft.
caption: Rob Mueller talking with Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin about the space mining robot RASSOR developed by the KSC Swamp Works.
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