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Photo Diary: Kennedy Space Center FL [1]

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Date: 2023-03-04

Well, I had intended to visit the US Air Force’s missile museum and the Mercury/Gemini launch pads at Cape Canaveral. But alas that area is now closed off to the public and NASA isn’t running bus tours out there anymore, so I missed out on it. But I’ll run the diary I had written for it anyway, since it’s an interesting story, and it’s still relevant to the history of the Kennedy Space Center.

For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and travel around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visit. I am currently wintering in Florida.

At the end of the Second World War, the United States carried out a massive effort to catch up with Nazi rocket technology. Captured German equipment and scientists were brought to the United States, and soon the US was producing larger and more powerful missiles that were capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

At first, the Army was in charge of test-firing improved versions of German V-1 and V-2 rockets at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. But by 1947, this test range, measuring only 135 miles, was no longer capable of keeping up with the improved power of American missiles. The danger was starkly illustrated in May 1947 when a modified V-2 went off-course during a test launch, flew over the nearby city of El Paso TX, and landed across the border in a cemetery in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

The US decided that it needed a new Joint Long Range Proving Ground, and in early 1948 the Air Force (which had just been broken away from the US Army Air Corps and become a separate military service) announced that it would construct a test range in California. That, however, brought a protest from the Mexican Government, which did not want to allow any missiles to be launched near its territory. So, the Air Force was forced to go with its second choice site—Cape Canaveral, on the Atlantic Coast in central Florida. The Air Force already had a base here at Banana River, and the Cape offered unlimited potential range out over the ocean as well as the gravitational advantages of being close to the equator.

The British quickly agreed to establishing a radar tracking station in the Bahamas. Meanwhile the US Air Force constructed a string of launch pads along the shoreline, accompanied by blockhouses and support facilities. The first missile launch from the Cape was a “Bumper” version of the V-2 with a WAC-Corporal second stage, in July 1950. Over the next few years the complex was used for many more test-launches, including Snark, Navajo, Redstone, Atlas and Titan nuclear missiles.

When the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite in October 1957, the US, fearing it had fallen behind Russian technology, tried desperately to catch up, but the first American attempt to launch its own satellite from the Cape, on a Vanguard missile, failed spectacularly when it exploded on Cape Canaveral’s launch pad 18A.

The United States suffered another humiliation when the USSR launched the first human into space, putting Yuri Gagarin into orbit in April 1961. The US had already formed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and given it the task of putting an American into space. NASA’s Project Mercury had the assigned mission of developing the technology to put humans into space, to study how they reacted to the space environment, and to test launch and recovery procedures.

A month after Gagarin’s orbit, NASA launched astronaut Alan Shepard on a suborbital flight in a Mercury capsule, using a modified Redstone nuclear missile as the launch vehicle.

The mission, dubbed Mercury-Redstone 3, had been plagued by delays. Shepard’s spacecraft, which he had named “Freedom 7”, had arrived at the Cape back in December 1960, but it had demonstrated some technical glitches, and rather than go with the backup capsule it was decided to make the necessary repairs to the primary.

Then in January 1960, during a test flight with the chimpanzee Ham on board, the Redstone rocket had malfunctioned, burning for longer than intended, producing higher g-forces upon re-entry and causing the spaceship to land 60 miles long from its recovery point. This worried NASA, and they decided to postpone Shepard’s launch until another test could be done. This ultimately pushed Shepard’s flight to April 25, then weather issues delayed the launch again until May 5. By then, Gagarin had already been in orbit.

When Shepard entered Freedom 7 at 5:15am, the countdown encountered several delays—one to wait for some clouds to clear, another to reboot a computer at the Control Center, yet another to fix a malfunctioning power unit. In all, the launch time was delayed by two and a half hours.

And that caused an awkward problem for Shepard. He had expected his flight to last only 15 minutes. But now, after sitting in his cramped spaceship for almost three hours, he had to pee. Letting him out wasn’t an option, since the cumbersome hatch would need to be opened and then re-closed. So Shepard told Control to turn off the power to the medical sensors inside his spacesuit (so he wouldn’t short them out) and pee’d inside.

Freedom 7 finally lifted off at 9:34am. The flight was a ballistic arc, meaning that it went up, floated through space for a few minutes, then fell back down. In total, it lasted just 15 minutes—long enough for Shepard to confirm that the capsule’s control jets worked properly, to make some observations through his periscope (the early Mercury ships did not have windows), and to test-fire the retro-rockets which would slow the ship from orbit and allow it to re-enter.

Freedom 7 reached a height of 116 miles, and traveled 200 miles out into the Atlantic, splashing down near the Bahamas. He was picked up by the aircraft carrier Lake Champlain.

Shepard’s flight was followed by a second suborbital mission by Gus Grissom. Both of these were launched from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 5.

The Redstone was not powerful enough to put the Mercury spacecraft into orbit, however, so NASA carried out a series of tests to man-rate the Atlas intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile. The first American orbital flight came in February 1962, when John Glenn was launched from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 14, with communications and telemetry monitoring at the nearby Mercury Control Center blockhouse. Three more orbital Mercury flights followed.

In 1961, President John Kennedy had set a national goal of landing a man on the Moon by 1970. This would necessitate the ability to maneuver and dock separate spaceships while in orbit, and this led NASA to begin Project Gemini. This was a series of two-man spaceships which would be taken into orbit by the Titan II booster rocket, another modified nuclear missile. In all there were 12 manned Gemini missions, which perfected the techniques of space walking, navigation, maneuvering and docking. All of the Gemini flights were launched from Launch Complex 19 at the newly renamed Cape Kennedy, after the assassinated President. (The name was later changed back to “Cape Canaveral” by the Florida State Legislature.)

The next step in NASA’s program would be Project Apollo, which would produce the spacecraft and booster rocket that would actually carry humans to the Moon. But this presented issues for the Cape Canaveral facilities. The complex maneuvers necessary for a Moon flight were beyond the capacity of the Mercury/Gemini flight control centers. And while the newer pads at Launch Complex 34 and 37 were capable of handling the Saturn 1B that would put the early Apollo tests into Earth orbit, the huge Saturn V rocket necessary to reach the Moon was too large for the Cape’s launch pads. (NASA’s original plans had envisioned the development of an even larger rocket, the Nova, but this was eventually dropped.)

So an entirely new site, Launch Complex 39, was built specifically for NASA on nearby Merritt Island (after a brief dispute with the Air Force, who wanted to expand their missile range onto the island). While the Saturn 1B test flights were launched from Complex 34 at the Cape, the Moon landings were all launched from Launch Complex 39 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island. LC-39 was also used for all of the Florida Space Shuttle missions in the 1970s and 80s.

The Air Force facilities at Cape Canaveral, meanwhile, continued to be used for missile tests (including the Minuteman, Polaris, Trident and Peacekeeper nuclear missiles) and for military space launches (including satellites using the Delta series of launch vehicles).

Today, the Air Force missile range has been renamed the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Although public access is limited, the Sands Space History Center, located near the base’s entrance gate, has a public display of some of the missiles and technology that were developed and tested here.

Some photos from an afternoon at the Kennedy Space Center.

(I already diaried the Kennedy Space Center here from a previous visit, so I’ll focus mostly on the new stuff.)

The Badging Building for NASA employees and contractors. I’m guessing that the Mercury-Redstone rocket here may be the one that used to stand at the Cape Canaveral launch pad.

Kennedy Space Center

Rocket Garden

Vertical Assembly Building

The mobile launch tower for the SLS rocket

The business end of a Saturn V

Space Shuttle Atlantis

Orion spaceship, flown into space as a test for the Artemis missions

Cargo version of SpaceX Dragon spaceship, flown to the ISS

Engineering mockup of Boeing’s Starliner spaceship

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/4/2151635/-Photo-Diary-Kennedy-Space-Center-FL

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