Loudest room

- Who
- Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility, Glenn Research Center
- What
- 163 decibel(s) (A-weighted)
- Where
- United States (Sandusky)
- When
- 2011
The Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility (RATF) is a concrete-walled room that measures 57 ft (17.36 m) high, 47.5 ft (14.47 m) long, and 37.5 ft (11.43 m) wide. It has 36 massive loudspeaker horns (properly called "noise sources") covering one entire wall. These speakers, driven by pressurised nitrogen gas, can saturate the room with 163 dB of continuous noise for up to 10 minutes. The biggest speakers generate a tone at 25 Hz, which is just above the lowest note humans can hear, while the smaller speakers go as high as 250 Hz. However, the upper harmonics generated by these speakers create a wall of sound that ranges from 25–10,000 Hz. The facility was completed in 2011 and is operated as part of NASA's Glenn Research Center. It is located in the Plum Brook Station, a 6,400-acre campus near Sandusky, Ohio. The RATF's purpose is to test rocket parts, satellites and other space-related hardware to ensure that it can cope with the punishing noise of a rocket launch.
The RATF is in a building called the Space Power Facility, which provides a one-stop shop for spacecraft and satellite testing. The RATF is connected by a set of giant rolling doors to the Mechanical Vibration Test Facility, where a vibrating test stand can be used to physically shake things apart, and beyond another, even bigger set of doors lies the Space Simulation Vacuum Chamber, where test items can be subjected to a complete vacuum.
It's not clear what would happen if a person was unlucky enough to be trapped inside the RATF when the speakers were turned on. They would certainly be deafened almost instantly – 160 dB is around the sound level required to perforate human eardrums – but the pressure waves would also cause severe nausea and loss of balance, possibly also inducing a feeling like choking (from the sound shaking the muscles in the throat). Sound levels closer to 170 dB could actually paralyse the lungs.