The Infamous and Unknown Rubber Room




Going underneath the launch pad, which is still set from the Shuttle days. There’s a mess of pipes inside that facilitate launch, some dating to the Apollo days. It’s a massive facility. Credit: Amy Shira Teitel


I hadn’t heard of the rubber room before I went to Kennedy two weeks ago. I’ve since gone through some of the more comprehensive historical documents I have and some candid popular histories that might have a mention of the room from an astronaut, but in all written accounts the blast chamber is as unseen as the real thing. There are a few emergency egress reports that reference a blast room or blast chamber, but nothing really goes into its history, specifications, and construction.

After digging around, and receiving some brilliant insights from two friends who work at KSC (those “right people”), I put together a general picture of the rubber room and blast chamber. In short, it’s an underground bomb shelter designed to protect Apollo astronauts and pad crews in the event of a Saturn V exploding on the launch pad. If the 363 foot rocket exploded, the resulting fireball would be 1,408 feet wide and burn for nearly 40 seconds reaching a peak temperature of 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Not something you want to be close to.

Here I am, kneeling on the flat trough at the base of the slide in the rubber room! It’s not as well lit now as it likely was when it was actively used for emergency egress training. Credit: Pete Chitko

In the base of the mobile launch platform, the giant crawler that carried the Saturn V from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad, there was a door that gave crews passage to a 200 foot long slide. The slide didn’t carry the men away from the launch pad. Rather, it twisted and turned to deliver them to a room 40 feet underneath the launch pad.

That room, into which astronauts and crews were delivered along a flat trough at the base of the slide, is made entirely of rubber ostensibly to cushion their speeding arrival. A 6-inch steel door opens onto a short tunnel that leads into the blast room, which, like a missile silo, is mounted on huge springs so an explosion overhead won’t rattle anything inside.

The blast room is lined with 20 huge chairs, big enough for an astronaut in a full pressure suit to sit in comfortably. Other amenities include 20 fire blankets, a toilet, and enough carbon dioxide filters and chemical oxygen candles to keep up to 20 men alive for a full 24 horus. By then, the air above them should be clear making it safe to leave. There are two ways out, long tunnels that crews can follow to a safe point far from the launch pad. Alternatively they could wait for recovery crews to come to them. (For a more complete look at the rubber room and blast chamber, check out my article on Discovery News.)

To very serious door leading from the rubber room to the blast room. The little tunnel is necessary since the blast room is mounted on springs. Credit: Amy Shira Teitel

The door leading from the mobile launch pad to the slide and the opening at the base of the launch pad have been cut off.  But the rubber room and blast chamber are still there. They’re closed off from the public, protected by a sign proclaiming the area to be an artifact and a man that checks your badge before giving you the key to get inside.

And they’re both looking a little worse for their disuse. The rubber room is still bouncy and feels like it would be a nice place to slam into after careening down a 200 foot slide, but the plastic is starting to peel and flake off in some places. The blast room is now without fire blankets, possibly because they were made of asbestos and were just a looming health hazard (this is a point I still need to confirm). The chairs are all still there complete with restraints, though they don’t look incredibly inviting. And the toilet is still there, too, looking equally uninviting tucked behind one of the big chairs next to the small tunnel leading to the rubber room.

One of the massive chairs in the blast room. Credit: Amy Shira Teitel

One of the really neat things that looks almost good as new is the chart on the wall that tells occupants how to maintain breathable oxygen for everyone inside. There are four scenarios – what to do with 1-5 people, with 6-10 people, with 11-15 people, and with 16-20 people. With more people, carbon dioxide filters have to be changed more frequently and oxygen candles have to be lit. There’s also reference to a crank that needs to be turned a number of times per hours, but I still haven’t figured out exactly what the crank was and how it worked. The chart is perfectly clear, an appropriate way to give men possibly terrified hiding from a massive explosion overhead vital life-saving information.

The toilet in the blast room. Not designed with privacy in mind. Credit: Amy Shira Teitel

The rubber room and blast chamber were never used – thankfully no Saturn V every exploded on the launch pad – and were abandoned in place when the Apollo program ended. Another Apollo emergency egress method had the astronauts ride slide wires from the top of the launch pad to the safety of a bunker on the ground. Shuttle astronauts opted to use the slide wire as their primary emergency egress method, taking gondolas from the gantry to the ground.

I love learning new things about NASA’s history, and getting to walk right inside that history was sort of incredible. If I make it back inside, I’ll be sure to bring a better camera than my iPhone. I did get some pictures of the egress tunnels and up the slide, but the flash is just too weak to really light things up and capture any detail.

The wall chart outlining how to keep various numbers of men alive and supplied with oxygen in the blast chamber. Credit: Amy Shira Teitel


  1. says

    Wow! That is so cool! I am huge space nerd, I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this! The Apollo astronauts had all the fun. If there was an emergency before they entered the capsule they rode down a big slide, if after they entered the capsule then they got to take a quick jaunt with the escape tower, both sound pretty fun

  2. David Shomper says

    I have a vague recollection of sliding down the tube during pad emergency egress training. I’m just glad they didn’t make us take the slidewire.

  3. Craig McGill says

    The only problem with this post is that it’s too short. I love this sort of thing, thanks for sharing – and I’m sure you’re going to be flooded with access requests via your friends now… :-)

  4. says

    Although the thought of it makes my claustrophobic self a bit queazy, I love reading about and seeing the details of that era of space design!

    So, how thick is that door?

  5. Jasper says

    Exciting stuff! You are a lucky lady, having had the opportunity to visit this place.
    Just imagine how that room would have shaken in the event of an exploding Saturn V…

  6. David says

    “made entirely of rubber ostensibly to cushion their speeding arrival”? Ridiculous suggestion. In fact, the nickname “rubber room” only refers to the fact that the structure was isolated from shock waves by being placed on rubber cushions. The room itself, like other blast-resistant structures was made of concrete and steel. Is she suggesting that she actually saw that the entire room was made of rubber? She should have asked Pete Chitko to fact check this and maybe provide interesting new information not already available elsewhere.

  7. Ted says

    David – bit harsh there, don’t you think? Regardless of the validity of your points, common decency should prevail; perhaps referring to the author as “Amy”, as opposed to “she” would sound less condescending. I think you should have checked with Hervus Oppanleivawitz before posting.

  8. Rob Schofield says

    There are two similar rooms (one per pad) at Baikanour for the original Russian N-1 rocket launch pads, one of which was later adapted for the Buran shuttle. Apparently very popular with the militia now guarding the remains of the pads from “marauders” to prevent unauthorised salvage.


Leave a Reply