Hangar One

Save Moffet Field's Hangar One

2007-12-23T06:21:00.000-08:00

Save Moffet Field's Hangar One - Boing Boing Thread

Navy Delays Hangar One Report

2007-12-23T06:19:00.000-08:00

Navy Delays Hangar One Report — Moffett Users Blog

Hanging hopes on analysis, Study could decide fate of Hangar One

2007-12-22T13:16:00.000-08:00

Palo Alto Daily News

Saturday Dec 22

Hanging hopes on analysis, Study could decide fate of Hangar One

By Melanie Carroll / Daily News Staff Writer

Advocates of preserving Hangar One say they're somewhat optimistic about news last week that the U.S. Navy will perform a structural analysis of the historic structure's steel frame before deciding its fate.

Prior to that announcement, the Navy was slated to release this month its evaluation of what should be done with the hangar at Moffett Field.

That evaluation has been postponed pending completion of the steel frame analysis, according to a letter from Darren Newton, environmental coordinator for Base Realignment and Closure. Newton could not be reached this week by phone to discuss the matter.

The Navy, which once owned and operated the structure that used to house giant airships, is now responsible for cleaning the site, which is known to contain toxins. The Navy previously recommended razing the Depression-era hangar, upsetting some residents who want it to be preserved.

"It's a good thing that the Navy is doing the structural analysis, because there really wouldn't be a need to look at those issues if demolition was the only option," Lenny Siegel of the Save Hangar One Committee wrote in an e-mail to the Daily News.

Still, Siegel said, there is a remote chance the analysis may find that the hangar is too unstable to save.

Siegel said in his e-mail he is starting to think the Navy will propose removing the siding and roof and coating the frame, leaving the skeleton for new owner NASA and the community to deal with.

"I don't think that's sufficient, but it is better than demolition," Siegel said.

Moffett Field Museum Curator Bill Stubkjaer said anything that prolongs the life of the structure is good.

"I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt," Stubkjaer said.

Longtime preservation advocate Bob Moss said he is somewhat skeptical about the Navy doing an analysis at this stage of the game.

Others are somewhat more hopeful.

"It signals that retaining the steel frame may be one of the alternatives to be considered in detail in the Navy's report," Steve Williams, a Save Hangar One Committee member, wrote in his blog.

The options under consideration for the hangar are to cover it with rubberized material; give it an acrylic coating; cover it with a visually similar siding; remove the siding and coat exposed surfaces; or demolish and remove the entire structure.

Latest Hangar One delay offers hope

2007-12-14T16:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=302

Friday, December 14, 2007, 4:34 PM

Latest Hangar One delay offers hope
In reading tea leaves on Navy's intention, advocates applaud new structural analysis

by Daniel Debolt
Mountain View Voice Staff

A highly anticipated report that would announce the fate of Moffett Field's historic Hangar One has been delayed again, this time so the Navy can do a structural analysis of the hangar's steel frame.

Even though the report has been delayed almost a year now, preservationists believe this latest delay could be a good sign.

"It sounds like the Navy is considering preservation, as we asked them to do, and they need more time," wrote Save Hangar One Committee member Steve Williams in his blog.

And committee member and founder Lenny Siegel, a longtime advocate for toxic cleanup of military bases, agrees.

"I don't think a structural analysis is very useful if the Navy intends to propose demolition," he wrote in an e-mail. "This suggests that it [the Navy] may propose removing the contaminated materials and leaving the superstructure intact. In that case, it would be up to NASA, other agencies, local communities, or private companies to fund re-skinning."

According to a monthly Hangar One report issued by the Navy, the structural analysis will determine whether the hangar's frame can stand on its own or withstand the weight of a new coating.

In a letter, Navy spokesperson Darren Newton said the new efforts are "in response to concerns expressed by the regulatory agencies and members of the community." He went on to say that "conducting a structural analysis at this time will provide useful information necessary for a sound evaluation of the feasibility of several alternatives being considered in the EE/CA" -- shorthand for environmental evaluation and cost analysis.

The Navy has also announced that the original 13 alternatives studied in the EE/CA have been narrowed down to six, which will be selected based on cost. Those options include covering the hangar with rubberized material, with acrylic material, or -- the least favorite among locals -- demolish and remove the hangar altogether.

Toxic PCBs have been found in Hangar One's siding, and are leeching into the air and the groundwater. The Navy, which is on the hook to clean up the toxic materials, had previously decided to demolish the structure, causing a public outcry last year.

For more information, contact Newton at (619) 532-0963 or darren.newton@navy.mil.

Moffett Airfield and Stevens Creek in the blogosphere

2007-12-13T16:23:00.001-08:00

Moffett Airfield and Stevens Creek in the blogosphere & news (blews?)
By judielaine
He's provided an update on the Hanger One report from the Navy, delayed until January. In other news, the SF Chronicle ran an article about the release of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project report with this supportive blog ...
Curious.Judith - http://www.grey-cat.com/curious

Fate of Hangar One could be set this month

2007-12-03T08:39:00.000-08:00

http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_7623793?nclick_check=1
By Melanie Carroll
Bay Area News Group

Article Launched: 12/03/2007 08:39:56 AM PST

Advocates for preserving historic Hangar One in Mountain View are cautiously optimistic they will receive an answer from the Navy this month regarding the facility's future. But they're not holding their breath.

Last year the Navy recommended demolishing the Depression-era hangar at Moffett Field, upsetting some residents who want to save the icon that is visible from Highway 101. For more than a year, the Navy has been reconsidering its decision that demolition is the most cost-effective way to cleanse the site of harmful chemicals - an option it estimates would cost $12.2 million.

The Navy, which once owned the hangar that housed giant airships and is now responsible for cleaning up the site, announced in November it would release a new evaluation this month.

Bob Moss, a member of the Save Hangar One Committee and the Restoration Advisory Board, said there is no guarantee the Navy will stick to its timeline.

"They said it would come out in August," Moss said.

Fellow committee member Steve Williams thinks the Navy is working hard to develop an airtight report that is not open to debate, unlike last year's evaluation, which met with heavy criticism.

"They're taking their time to get it right," Williams said.

Navy spokesman Darren Newton could not be reached for comment over the weekend.

Save Hangar One Committee members have proposed "re-skinning" the hangar with a Teflon-coated fiberglass after the cleanup is complete and thecurrent layer of corrugated steel is removed, likely at cost of about $42 million. Roughly 1,500 signatures have been gathered in support of the plan.

"Once we've saved it, it's much more straightforward to find investors" to help fund its restoration, Williams said.

NASA, which now owns the hangar, would ultimately determine its future uses.

Moss said it could serve as the home of a yet-to-be-completed zeppelin commissioned by a Los Gatos-based company.

"Rent money could be used to refurbish (the hangar)," Moss said.

On Tuesday, the Mountain View City Council approved a resolution supporting a plan by Airship Ventures to house its 246-foot sightseeing zeppelin at Moffett Field. NASA has yet to decide whether the company will be allowed to store their zeppelin at nearby Hangar Two, as the company has proposed.

Airship Ventures aims to have their dirigible in the Bay Area by the end of next year.

Christmas may come early for Hangar One

2007-11-21T17:52:00.001-08:00

Christmas may come early for Hangar One
Mountain View Voice - Mountain View,CA,USA
by Daniel debolt The Navy, which has kept the public guessing about whether it will demolish historic Hangar One at Moffett Field, is scheduled to announce ...
See all stories on this topic

Christmas may come early for Hangar One
Decision due in early December on whether Navy will demolish Moffett icon

by Daniel DeBolt
Mountain View Voice Staff

The Navy, which has kept the public guessing about whether it will demolish historic Hangar One at Moffett Field, is scheduled to announce its decision in early December.

"If all goes well, it [the decision] will go out in early December," said Navy spokesperson Darren Newton in a phone interview last week. It was the same thing he said to dozens of people at the last Moffett Field Restoration Advisory Board meeting Nov. 8.

After saying last year that it had decided to demolish the huge hangar, the Navy stepped back from that position after a huge public outcry and strong criticism of its analysis, and has spent the last year re-evaluating its decision.

The December decision will be subsequently discussed at the Jan. 10 advisory board meeting, which may be a big party -- or an angry meeting reminiscent of what happened the last time the Navy said it would tear down the hangar.

There will "either be lots of cake or lots of rope," joked RAB co-chair Bob Moss.

The Navy may have already given it away: At a recent RAB meeting, Newton leaned over and told Moss, "We're going to have the official response back in a month or two and I think you'll be happy with it," Moss recalls.

Nevertheless, Moss said, "It's very hard to read what they are going to do."

Newton's predecessor, Rick Weissenborn, told the RAB earlier this year that a decision had to be made by the summer. A temporary coating is peeling off the hangar's toxic siding which, when combined with winter rains, could be a recipe for increased runoff of toxic PCBs.

The delayed announcement "may mean they are going to demolish it and they don't care about sealing it," Moss said. "Or it may mean they can't make up their minds."

The Navy was initially supposed to release the decision earlier this year in the spring, but has rescheduled the announcement numerous times. "Every time they give us a date, it slips," Moss said.

Meanwhile, the Save Hangar One Committee, a group dedicated to preserving the hangar, has had success in presenting an alternative to the toxic siding.

In particular, the group's architect, Linda Ellis, has been educating the public on a Teflon fiberglass covering that could serve as a new siding. However, the Navy won't let her inside the hangar to confirm once and for whether the idea would work.

At the RAB meeting earlier this month, Navy spokesman Newton said it was the Navy's position that the public is not allowed onto the site. But while the Navy is responsible for cleaning up the site, it is NASA that now owns the hangar.

Several government officials have been allowed inside. Wayne Donaldson, director of the State Historic Preservation Office, recently visited the hangar and said he was "more determined than ever" to save it.

The current campaign to re-skin the hangar hinges on its feasibility. The committee has gathered 1,500 signatures in support of the fabric covering.

"You have to see what the inside of hangar looks like before you can intelligently make a decision" as to how the fabric will work, Moss said. "I'm not convinced that we know that it will."

The revised environmental evaluation and cost analysis will lay out several options for the hangar, telling the complete story behind whatever position taken by the Navy. Last year its costs were disputed because the estimates for demolition and restoration differed substantially from NASA's, whose numbers made restoration seem much more feasible.

More information is available at www.savehangarone.org.

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Comments
HORRAH LINDA ELLIS! OPEN YOUR EYES NAVY!
Posted by peter a, a resident of another community, on Nov 26, 2007 at 8:22 am

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.26.07

After visiting the Hangar One site last May and studying the available drawings and photos of this building, the volunteers are confident that covering the Hangar One structure with PTFE is a viable solution. To reiterate, in addition to the architects, the volunteer team including a structural engineer, construction executive, and architectural fabric manufacturer and installation representatives that have all been involved in significant and related projects.

The team requested to access the Hangar to provide a more detailed design and cost analysis for the PTFE solution for Hangar One. Any information acquired would be provided to the Navy and RAB Committee.

Linda Ellis, Architect
Posted by Linda Ellis, on Nov 26, 2007 at 3:42 pm

How NASA helped invent Silicon Valley

2007-10-02T21:28:00.001-07:00

How NASA helped invent Silicon Valley
CNET News.com - San Francisco,CA,USA
... would handle gigantic airships and that would need a mammoth hangar. The result? The Sunnyvale Naval Air Station, later known as NASA Moffett Field. ...
See all stories on this topic

How NASA helped invent Silicon Valley
By Daniel TerdimanStaff writer, CNET News.comOctober 2, 2007, 4:00 a.m. PDT
Editors' note: This is part of a series examining 50 years of space exploration.

For anyone who's ever been stuck in rush-hour traffic on U.S. Highway 101 through Silicon Valley, the region's overgrowth of green-glass office buildings, ugly tech company headquarters and expensive cars is a frustrating flip side to the steady stream of world-changing innovation that has emerged there.

But if you'd visited the region in 1930, all you'd have seen was a two-lane highway cutting through acres and acres of nothing but farmland and tiny hamlets, and not even a hint of what would someday become arguably the most important commercial technology center in the world.
"Having the space program as a very challenging real-world mission to focus tech development around was tremendously inspiring and productive."

--Scott Fisher, founding director, Virtual Environment Workstation Project at NASA Ames
In December of that year, however, word came that the U.S. Navy was going to open an air station in Sunnyvale, Calif., one that would handle gigantic airships and that would need a mammoth hangar.

The result? The Sunnyvale Naval Air Station, later known as NASA Moffett Field. And today, Moffett is home to NASA's Ames Research Center, a facility that is at the heart of Silicon Valley, both geographically and figuratively. In 1930 the region didn't know what was about to arrive, but it soon realized how much change was coming.

"Industries allied to aviation will spring up like mushrooms, each bringing its own payroll," wrote the San Jose Mercury Herald in 1931, according to NASA. "It means in short that San Jose and the Bay region are on the threshold of the most glorious era of posterity in their history."
Usually, such proclamations fall short of reality, but on this the newspaper was spot on. While the projected growth was expected to be tied to aviation, not space research, the arrival in 1939 of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics--the precursor to NASA--and later NASA itself helped drag the Valley into the center of American industry.

Of course, Silicon Valley has grown way beyond NASA since the Apollo program was leaning on researchers from Stanford, nearby University of California at Berkeley and a number of small companies that started to dot the area in the 1960s. But in the crucial early years of the Valley's technology industry, government contracts played a key role.

"Several companies in what would become Silicon Valley benefited from the ambitious goals and budget largesse of the Apollo space program," said Dag Spicer, the senior curator of the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, Calif. "The stringent quality and performance requirements of (integrated circuits) for Apollo allowed early semiconductor companies to learn at government (that is, public) expense, a technology that would soon have broad application and whose price would plummet as these companies perfected manufacturing methods."
A list of companies that emerged to take advantage of NASA's work on integrated circuits would be impossible to compile today, but there's no doubt that among the biggest winners on such a list would be Fairchild Semiconductor, and Intel, which was founded by Fairchild's Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore.

"Fairchild...was likely the largest recipient of government-related integrated circuit work," said Spicer. "The irony of these early contracts was that, while they were welcome in the early 1960s (when) semiconductor companies were learning how to make integrated circuits, by 1970, government/military work was frequently viewed as a damper on profits and innovation since it took people and resources away from research and development into newer and more profitable commercial products."

Nonetheless, the Apollo program turned out to be a fantastic source of technology that would eventually find its way into commercial products and applications. Also among the companies that would most benefit from the program was Hewlett-Packard. HP's association with the space program, in fact, pre-dates NASA, according to Measure magazine.

"HP's instrument sales force has been selling to the space program since the 1950s, before NASA was formally created," wrote Measure magazine in 1983, according to information provided by Devon Dawson, an archivist for HP spinoff Agilent Technologies. "NASA and its contractors use instruments from virtually every HP division to develop, test and support the sophisticated electronic equipment used in all NASA programs."

Specific instances of the HP-NASA alliance on the Apollo 11 program abound, Measure wrote in its September 1969 issue: The launch control facility at Cape Kennedy and Houston's Mission Control Center both utilized HP technology such as FM-AM telemetering signal generators and RF vector impedance meters. And, HP's Precision Frequency Source keyed to a cesium clock built by the company "provided the precise frequency outputs used for thousandths-of-a-second accuracy throughout the worldwide Apollo network of tracking stations and communications systems."
The relationship between HP and NASA has stayed strong, Dawson said. Among the space programs employing HP or Agilent technology are space shuttle missions, Mariner missions, Voyager 2, the 1995 docking of the Atlantis shuttle with the Mir Space Station and the Lunar Prospector in 1997.

But the impact of the Apollo program on commercial technology goes far beyond such highly specialized equipment and missions. According to Bruce Damer, founder of the DigiBarn computer museum and a frequent NASA contractor himself through his company DigitalSpace, it's possible to draw a direct evolutionary link between the simple flight simulators NASA was using for the Apollo astronauts in 1967 and 1968--what he called "one of the first highly interactive computer environments"--and some of the early commercial video games.
Similarly, NASA's work with wind tunnels at Moffett became so expensive that the agency decided to turn to supercomputers for more cost-effective simulations.

And that, in conjunction with work done at Ames on tele-operations and telepresence--research that tried to simulate the interior of the space shuttle--led to the creation of 3D graphics, head-mounted displays and early virtual reality technology, all partially funded by NASA.

"Starting in the 1960s, as the needs became more necessary...I think that drove the research on graphics tech and certainly computing in general," said Scott Fisher, chair of the interactive media division in the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, and the founding director of the Virtual Environment Workstation Project (VIEW) at NASA Ames. "When we built a real-time virtual environment system and the flow visualization guys used it to input their data, they were ecstatic that they could manipulate viewpoints into their data by just moving their head or walking around in the data as opposed to typing in a set of coordinates for each new viewpoint."
Another technology to come out of NASA and later find its way into industry was the use of audio technology in pilots' computerized interfaces, said Fisher.

"NASA did lots of work on finding the best ways to alert a pilot to some system problem," Fisher said. "Audio turned out to be very effective." Now, nearly 20 years later, the technology is making its way into video games and other off-the-shelf commercial systems, he said.

The relationship between NASA and space technologies and Silicon Valley and the companies that have blossomed there may best have been summed up by Northrop Grumman chairman and CEO Ronald Sugar in a speech he gave on September 20 at the 50th Anniversary of Space Exploration conference in Pasadena, Calif.

"Space exploration and use has created new industries that today generate billions of dollars of revenue, employ millions of people worldwide and improve the lives of virtually everyone," said Sugar. "Space, which first served as a coliseum for two grappling superpowers, now welcomes new nations to explore and utilize its potential, and in the process, draws all mankind closer together."

Of course, for those who work or worked in the space industry, the experience of being involved with such technologies and seeing how they affected the rest of the world is something that will always be special.

"Having the space program as a very challenging real-world mission to focus tech development around was tremendously inspiring and productive," said Fisher.

Group gathers signatures to save Hangar One

2007-09-12T18:27:00.001-07:00

Group gathers signatures to save Hangar One
Palo Alto Daily News - Palo Alto,CA,USA
The group is planning to present the signatures to the Navy at Thursday's Moffett Field Restoration Advisory Board meeting, said board member Lenny Siegel, ...
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Group gathers signatures to save Hangar One
By Banks Albach / Daily News Staff WriterA group hoping to stop the Navy from tearing down Hangar One turned its campaign up a notch this weekend, gathering nearly 1,500 signatures in support of restoring Mountain View's metal leviathan along U.S. Highway 101. Rather than demolish the 200-foot-tall, 8.5-acre hangar, a job the Navy has calculated to cost nearly $12.2 million, the group, Save Hangar One, is proposing that the Navy resurface the hangar with a thin, Teflon-coated fiberglass layer. NASA, which owns the site and would be responsible for its future use, has estimated that demolition would cost somewhere under $30 million -- a much higher price tag than estimated by the Navy -- and that restoration would cost a little more than that amount. The resurfacing proposed by Save Hangar One would require removing the current layer of corrugated steel and is estimated to cost roughly $42 million. The Navy proposed demolishing the hangar in May 2006 after learning that its metal skin had been leaching PCBs, or polychlorinatedbiphemyls, into the nearby wetlands. The toxins have also permeated the air inside the hangar. But the recommendation prompted outcry from many Silicon Valley residents and public officials. Linda Ellis, a member of the Save Hangar One Committee who was gathering signatures at the Mountain View Art and Wine Festival, said the response from the public has been remarkable. "People either support (it), or don't know about (it) and are ambivalent," she said. "No one has said it should be torn down." Mark Coquia, a Mountain View resident attending the festival, said Hangar One is piece of local history, while San Jose resident Doug Mitchell said the hangar is a great resource and should be used more. "I think they should save it," Mitchell said. "They should do more air shows out there." The group is planning to present the signatures to the Navy at Thursday's Moffett Field Restoration Advisory Board meeting, said board member Lenny Siegel, who also serves as the formal chair of Save Hangar One. The Navy is set to issue a new set of findings and recommendations on Hangar One sometime in November. Because a 30- to 45-day public comment period follows, Siegel said his group needs to be prepared if the Navy recommends demolition again. "If they make good recommendations, no problem," Siegel said. "If they are bad ones, we'll need to be ready to organize." The Save Hangar One Committee meets again on Sept. 25. The Siegel said the group will discuss how much further to take the petition campaign and when to deliver the signatures to U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The group also collected about 1,700 signatures over four days in summer 2005. For more information on Hangar One, visit www.savehangarone.org.

New skin for hangar?

2007-08-29T22:58:00.001-07:00

New skin for hangar?
San Jose Mercury News - CA, USA
By Melanie Carroll With the US Navy just months away from announcing its decision on whether to demolish Moffett Field's Hangar One, a group of citizens ...
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Awaiting a decision

2007-08-28T16:11:00.001-07:00

Google News Alert for: hanger moffett

Awaiting a decision
Palo Alto Daily News - Palo Alto,CA,USA
By Melanie Carroll/Daily News Writer With the US Navy just months away from announcing its decision on whether to demolish Moffett Field's Hangar One, ...
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Awaiting a decision

Proponents of covering Hangar One in fabric wait hope Navy rules against demolition

By Melanie Carroll/Daily News Writer

With the U.S. Navy just months away from announcing its decision on whether to demolish Moffett Field's Hangar One, a group of citizens dedicated to saving the edifice has launched a campaign to replace its contaminated siding with fabric.

The Save Hangar One Committee late last week vowed to circulate petitions and fliers and give out "Re-skin Hangar One" stickers in coming weeks and months to build support for the plan originally proposed by architect Linda Ellis.

Ellis' $12 million plan calls for covering most of the one-time home of the 785-foot-long USS Macon in a Teflon-coated Fiberglas fabric much like that used at Shoreline Amphitheatre. The ultimate goal is to reuse the hangar.

Under the re-skinning proposal, the Navy would pay $12 million to put up the fabric, said Lenny Siegel, founder of the committee. Prior to that, the Navy would have to remove the corrugated steel "skin," which contains PCBs. The estimated cost of removing the current top layer has been estimated at around $30 million.

"We need to generate excitement," Siegel said of the campaign. "We've got to do a lot of organizing in a hurry."

The Navy in November is slated to release an environmental evaluation and cost analysis which will determine if the 1930s-era hangar will be demolished, said John Hill, the Navy's base closure manager for Moffett Field. The Navy is responsible for cleaning up the site.

A May 2006 recommendation by the Navy called for demolishing the hangar, but that sparked outcry from Silicon Valley residents and officials who said the structure was an icon worth preserving. The Navy argued that demolition was the most cost-effective way to rid the site of toxins for around $12.2 million.

Hill said that the new environmental evaluation is being revised to reflect public comments and that "nobody should assume the same recommendation" as last year.

Still, Hill said that NASA, which now owns the Hangar One site, would be responsible for any reuse of the facility, including the proposal to cover it in fabric.

"NASA is interested in reusing" the hangar, said Sandy Olliges, the deputy director of safety and environmental and mission assurance for the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field. "The Navy has looked at a similar skin to what's on it now (corrugated steel) ... and evaluated this type of (fabric cover) skin. We have not seen that type of analysis."

A UC-Santa Cruz proposal still under development calls for a "solar energy center" inside the hangar, said Bill Berry, director of the University Affiliated Research Center. An exposition center or public gathering place could be housed in the facility, Berry said.

"Until the Navy makes a decision" it's hard to come up with specific plans, Berry said. He added that solar panels could be added on the south door of the hangar for maximum energy production and that it could be completed after the hangar is re-skinned.

Bob Moss, a member of the Restoration Advisory Board along with Siegel, fears that NASA won't have the money needed to re-skin the hangar and that Ellis' plan is doomed to fail.

"It will give the Navy an excuse to tear it down," Moss said. "It could push the Navy to make a stupid decision."

Siegel maintains that the Navy must clean up the contamination and make the place whole.

"It's not just what they feel like doing," Siegel said. "A historic obligation exists."

E-mail Melanie Carroll at mcarroll@dailynewsgroup.com.

Presented May 10th @ RAB Meeting

2007-05-10T19:15:00.000-07:00

News Reprinted From The Mountain View Voice

Friday, May 18, 2007
Fabric covering for Hangar One?
Process similar to that used to cover Shoreline's tent
by Daniel DeBolt

If the Navy decides to preserve Hangar One later this year, the historic structure may be covered in a fabric stronger than steel, resulting in an all-white look reminiscent of the hangar when it was first built.

At last week's Moffett Field Restoration Advisory Board meeting, architect Linda Ellis made a presentation on a Teflon-coated Fiberglass fabric that could make preservation of the hangar a more practical option. The fabric is already used on large structures, including the Denver airport, the San Diego convention center and the Georgia Dome, which survived Hurricane Katrina unlike the Houston Astrodome made of another material. In fact, the oldest example of its use is right here in Mountain View: the 34-year-old Shoreline Amphitheatre.

The Navy is considering the fabric as one of many options in its environmental cleanup of the structure. In 2003, Hangar One was found to have toxic PCBs — short for polychlorinated biphenyls — washing off the coated steel siding and floating in the air inside. The Navy is required to remediate the pollutants, and in the past has stated that dismantling the structure is its best option.

The Navy had initially taken Ellis' presentation off the agenda, which caused an e-mail stir among Hangar One advocates. At the meeting, RAB member Lenny Siegel requested it be put back on the agenda, and Navy environmental coordinator Rick Weissenborn relented on the condition it was brief and general in nature. Weissenborn said, "It would be good to learn about it, it will help me a lot."

Ellis, who was not permitted to go inside the closed hangar, analyzed images of the inside provided by the Moffett Field Historical Society. The barrel vault construction of the hangar suits the fabric well, Ellis said. The frame and foundation are strong enough without the "shear" provided by the current steel siding, which must be removed for toxic cleanup. In the end, the hangar would have fabric stretched over its frame, much like the airship it once housed.
Added benefits would be cost savings on maintenance, since the fabric does not corrode, and it is also translucent enough to allow sunlight through, Ellis said. The fabric can be made with different color patterns, and Ellis proposed the exterior be all white, as it was originally.

The hangar's roof is currently painted black to prevent rain clouds from forming inside the massive structure. Since the fabric is breathable in one direction, it would allow condensation to escape outward, which may negate the need for the black color on the upper section.

The target cost of the fabric covering is $12 million. It is not known exactly how that compares with new steel siding, but Ellis said it would be competitive.

"Thank you, Linda," Weissenborn said after the brief presentation. "That gave me a lot of info I didn't know."

The Navy is preparing a revised Environmental Evaluation and Cost Analysis, which will include the decision for Hangar One and provide a list of alternatives for the its remediation ranging from demolition to restoration. The analysis will be released sometime later this year, and Weissenborn said there will be an effort to reach out to local newspapers so the announcement is not a surprise.

Weissenborn then said that the meeting was his last, and that he would be replaced by another base realignment and closure coordinator, Darren Newton. Siegel moved that the RAB commend Weissenborn for his service and "duress under fire," and jokingly added that his replacement need not wear body armor.

Jill Votaw, the region's public affairs officer, has also been reassigned. Votaw said it was a regular reshuffling of the organization, and mentioned that the new people could provide fresh eyes for the cleanup project.

As part of his handoff to Newton, Weissenborn gave a presentation on Moffett Field cleanup accomplishments, which included a map of 161 pipes and tanks that have leaked petroleum into the ground water. Of the 161, 76 are closed, 51 are being closed and 34 are in operation. Tons of contaminated soil has been removed, he said, and water channels and ponds, and several endangered species, including over 40 turtles, have been saved.

Later that evening the Navy revealed that it has spent $155 million cleaning up Moffett Field over the past 18 years, and estimates it will spend another $78 million before it's done, including the costs of Hangar One cleanup. It could take 200 years to completely remove all groundwater contamination.