Cape Then And Now

Boeing's Building in Titusville.
Launch control firing room at the Air Force Museum at Cape Canaveral.
The Gemini B capsule. Originally flown as an unmanned NASA mission, Gemini 2, it was reflown as a test of the heat shield for the USAF Manned Orbital Laboratory programme.
The hole in the Gemini heat shield. Cutting such a hole allows engineers to assess how much has been ablated away during reentry into the atmosphere. The Manned Orbital Laboratory programme was cancelled before any astronauts were flown. NASA's Gemini programme went on to fly 10 two-man missions, Gemini 3 through 12.
A Titan missile.

On Thursday, April 29, I was one of the first through the turnstile at the KSC Visitor Center. I registered for the "Cape Then And Now" tour, which has limited numbers and departs only once per day to go to the old launch pads in the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Today's tour was scheduled for 12:50 pm, so I had several hours to kill.

Still anxious about postal rates for parcels, I drove over to Port St John, pausing at the post office and at the nearby Boeing building.

The Cape Canaveral tour was both interesting and disappointing. I had been able to drive myself through the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in 1980, taking as long as I wanted to admire the facilities, take as many photos as I wanted and savour the experience. This time we were confined to the coach, and strictly instructed to not take photos except at designated stops. Of course, I and several others on the tour ignored the no photos injunction. Not that one can get decent photos through the tinted windows of a moving coach.

The museum part of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station has two blockhouses fitted out as they had been in their glory days. One building has additional displays, and the museum is surrounded by a rocket park. The place deserved several hours, but we were given only 20 minutes. At least I got one half of the USAF tour guide's commentary about the Air Force Space & Missile Museum recorded for "The Space Show", plus a few hurried photos.

At the second tour stop, near the Mercury Redstone mounted where Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom had been launched on suborbital spaceflights in 1961, me and another tourist, a German, deliberately walked away from the tour group and spent ten minutes closely looking at and photographing the rocket. We were not popular with the KSC tour guide, but the other passengers seemed to appreciate the extra time at this stop.

A view through the aging thick glass windows of the blockhouse's firing room.
A Redstone rocket of the type that launched Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom into suborbital spaceflights in 1961.

Some of Cape Canaveral's Launch Pad Towers seen from moving coach.

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