by Von Hardesty
In August 1953, the Army began testing its Redstone ballistic missile from a newly constructed Pad 4. Unlike Pad 3 with its jury-rigged painter’s scaffold, the Pad 4 complex had a steel service structure—actually a specially modified oil derrick—that was more than twice as tall as the 69-foot Redstone. The missile was delivered to the pad on a huge transporter-erector and raised to a vertical position. The Redstone was then enclosed by a series of covered servicing platforms built into the gantry, which was used by technicians to access the missile at several levels for pre-flight preparations. Before the Redstone was launched from a firing stand, the giant service tower, mounted on rails, was rolled well away from the missile to protect it in case the missile exploded on the pad. Pad 4 supported several early Redstone launches pending completion of Launch Complex (LC) 5 and 6 in 1955-1956.
This two-pad LC was a major step in the evolution of the Cape’s facilities, serving as the prototype for the many complexes that were to follow. In 1961, Americans watched Alan Shepard and Virgil Grissom blast off from LC-5 on their suborbital Mercury Redstone flights. The twin pads shared control facilities and offered essential backup in case an explosion rendered one of the pads inoperative. The central blockhouse was heavily fortified to withstand damage from a missile blow-up and had small, thick glass windows affording clear views of both pads. A wide variety of instruments gave technicians vital information on the rocket’s various systems and readiness for launch. An essential activity was continuous monitoring of the missile’s liquid oxygen supply; if too much of the ultracold liquid oxidizer was vented through a pressure release valve before launch, a tanker truck would have to top off the supply. The service towers were similar to the one installed on Pad 4.32 A steel umbilical tower next to the launch pad provided electrical power and vital fluids to the missile; the connecting cables fell away at the instant the rocket lifted from its pad.
A typical launch in the late 1950s offers a snapshot of Cape operations in the early years. At that time, one of the most critical missiles being tested was the Atlas ICBM. The military viewed its rapid development and deployment as an essential deterrent to a possible Soviet attack. Befitting its status, no less than four launch pads were erected for Atlas testing, soon to be joined by four adjoining pads for the Titan, America’s second ICBM. Collectively, the eight pads, all located close to the Atlantic Ocean, were known as “ICBM Row.”33 They were a most impressive, striking sight, each boasting a huge steel gantry and accompanying support facilities, surrounded by vast expanses of untouched palmetto scrub. Nearby, a growing number of other LCs supported the Jupiter and Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), Vanguard, and other missile programs.
The Atlas was build by General Dynamics Corporation’s Convair Division plant in San Diego, California. Somewhat incongruously for a weapons system that would fly thousands of miles to a target in 30 minutes, it was hauled across the country in a special tractor-trailer. Air police from the Air Force and a phalanx of Convair technicians accompanied the monster cargo shipment on a 2,700-mile journey, taking more than a week. The Air Force later flew the 75-foot missiles directly to the Cape on a huge cargo plane, using the Cape’s landing strip, known as the “Skid Strip.”34
Upon arrival, the Atlas was delivered to a collection of assembly and checkout hangars maintained by the various manufacturers and contractors working at the test center. Most of these general-purpose facilities, located in the Cape’s industrial park area, were built using a standardized design. They typically contained sophisticated testing equipment and cranes to move the missiles around.35 Once an Atlas was checked out and prepped to the satisfaction of the Convair technicians, it was taken to a launch pad, still on its trailer, and lifted to an upright position on a launch ring in front of its 12-story gantry. The gantry’s seven retractable work platforms then embraced the missile, allowing the technicians full access to the huge rocket as they prepared it for launch. In the early days of testing ballistic missiles at the Cape, that task could consume weeks. Only then would the gantry be pulled back on its rails to a position several hundred feet from the pad, leaving the Atlas standing alone. The rocket was then filled with a highly volatile mix of kerosene-based RP-1 rocket fuel and the fuel’s oxidizer, liquid oxygen, or LOX, which must be kept at nearly 300°F below zero.36
The long countdown preceding launch was conducted from a heavily reinforced blockhouse crammed with instrument-studded consoles, control panels, and other equipment used to monitor the rocket both before and after its launch. The blockhouse crew viewed the launch pad through periscopes. The string of tracking stations extending from the Cape across the Caribbean and well beyond were readied to follow the missile’s flight. Typically, after a number of countdown “holds” to address technical problems, the Atlas prepared for launch; its engines at full thrust and straining at the clamps holding it to the pad. Below the launch pad, enormous steel “flame deflectors,” each twice the height of a man, caught the exhaust flames from the Atlas’s engines and channeled them away from the missile. Water was sprayed over the deflectors at a rate of up to 35,000 gallons per minute to cool off the flaming exhaust, converting it into giant clouds of steam. The clamps were released, and the giant ICBM rose from its pad, its engines producing an incredibly loud roar. In the blockhouse, the launch crew anxiously monitored the Atlas’s progress.37 Unfortunately, in those early days of testing America’s long-range ballistic missiles, the flights very often ended shortly after launch with an explosion caused by an internal malfunction or the Range Safety Officer (RSO) detonating an onboard explosive charge. The RSO’s job was to closely monitor the missile’s flight and destroy it if it strayed from the carefully programmed flight plan. Over time, the Cape’s launch record improved greatly.
In contrast to the secrecy at Baikonur, the civilian space program at Cape Canaveral unfolded in full view of the public and the media. Crowds routinely gathered on the nearby beaches to watch the launches. While reporters with cameras were not regularly allowed into the launch site proper until the late 1950s, long camera lenses and binoculars provided significant coverage of launches from the beginning, including some spectacular failures. These included on-pad explosions of fully fueled early Atlases and Thors, as well the memorable failure of the first American attempt to orbit an Earth satellite on a Vanguard rocket in 1957. More than once, Cape observers watched in horror as a giant missile turned around in flight and headed back toward the ground. One such incident in July 1958 involved a NASA attempt to orbit an Explorer satellite using a Juno II booster based on the Army’s Jupiter IRBM. Almost immediately after liftoff, the Juno II deviated sharply to the left, departing from its planned vertical path. The RSO destroyed the missile barely five seconds into the flight. Trailing flames from the detonation of the explosive charge, the missile plunged earthward.38
CAPE CANAVERAL’S NEW ROLE AS A SPACEPORT
NASA became a vital part of life at Cape Canaveral in 1958. The Air Force, then the chief occupant of the remote site, provided NASA with the launch pads, rockets, and other facilities it needed to conduct its space missions.39 That was only fitting, because Air Force rockets played an essential role in the new NASA-run space program. For example, NASA’s early Pioneer missions to the moon and beyond were carried into space on Air Force (and occasionally Army) rockets such as the Thor-Able, Delta, and Juno II. When NASA’s manned spaceflight program took shape, it relied on versions of the Army’s Redstone and the Air Force’s Atlas and Titan II ICBMs for Project Mercury and Project Gemini. Project Mercury orbital flights (using the Atlas) and all Project Gemini flights (Titan II) were all launched from the legendary “ICBM Row.” However, following President Kennedy’s proposal to send Americans to the moon, NASA increasingly required its own separate launch facilities on a scale much larger than what existed at Cape Canaveral.
NASA’s arrival would sharply accelerate the enormous economic benefits of space and missile programs for the communities around Cape Canaveral, a cycle
that had begun with the military missile programs. As early as mid-summer 1957, Time magazine quoted a local resident on the area’s prosperity: “‘We’ve all got rocket fever here,’ said the manager of the Starlite Motel in Cocoa Beach (near Cape Canaveral)…. ‘Everything centers on the Cape.’…It is a land where highways are likely to be blocked so that trailers can haul their menacing, canvas-shrouded packages to the secret precincts beyond the gates.” The article noted that the population of Brevard County, home of the Cape, had shot to 70,000 in 1957 from 23,600 just seven years earlier. Land values were up as much as 500 percent, and in towns like Melbourne, Titusville, and Cocoa Beach, there appeared to be no end in sight.40
By July 1969, with Apollo 11 en route for the first manned lunar landing, Brevard County’s population had grown to an astonishing 250,000, including 35,000 engineers and technicians. But the good times could not last forever. Only a year after Apollo 11, and well before the last Apollo mission in December 1972, NASA administrator Thomas Paine said publicly of his agency, “We are at the peril point.” He was referring to sharp reductions in NASA’s budget, with repercussions extending well beyond the space agency’s hardware and missions. The boomtowns around the Cape were hard hit by the resulting fall in NASA and space contractor spending. Vacant and boarded-up homes, businesses, and offices soon appeared. With thousands of laid-off space engineers and technicians looking for jobs, resumé writing became among the most lucrative opportunities in the county.41
But in March 1965 the prosperity had received a significant boost. By this time the Cape had been renamed Cape Kennedy. In November 1963, just days after President Kennedy’s assassination, President Johnson ordered that Cape Canaveral (the geographic area) and the NASA launch center be renamed in honor of the slain president. The NASA facility became known as the Kennedy Space Center. The Air Force later renamed its Cape Canaveral launch facilities Cape Kennedy Air Force Station. (However, in 1973, in response to public sentiment in Florida, the original historic name of the cape was restored, though the Kennedy Space Center retains that name. The Air Force launch facilities were renamed Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.) In March 1965, the future of the Cape complex was shaping up on Merritt Island at NASA’s Kennedy Space Flight Center, across the Banana River from the Air Force’s huge missile complex.
With full responsibility for Project Apollo, NASA set aside some 111,000 acres of land on Merritt Island to construct assembly and launching facilities for the mighty Saturn V moon rocket. It was going into business for itself, in a rather large way. A 1965 magazine article notes: “Beyond the Banana River, NASA is building new production-line facilities…their specifications are so superlative as to strain belief. The 552-foot Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), for example, will have four rocket bays behind the tallest doors in the world, and more interior volume than the Great Pyramid of Cheops, or the Pentagon and the (Chicago) Merchandise Mart combined.” In somewhat breathless terms, the article discusses various aspects of the assembly and movement to the launch pad of the Saturn V, including the “biggest windshield wipers in the world” on the cab of the crawler-transporter that would move the huge rocket. The transporter would carry its massive load on “a special crawlway, as wide as the New Jersey Turnpike and almost 8-feet thick (to support the 17.5-million pound combined weight of the transporter and its load).”42
A network of support facilities was linked to Cape Kennedy. NASA administrator Jim Webb created the new Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, Texas. In 1973, this pivotal component in the NASA manned space program was renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. The new facility was given responsibility for all human spaceflight missions, the training of all astronauts, and the development of the spacecraft needed to carry out the manned missions. Beginning with the second manned Gemini flight, the MSC also functioned as Mission Control for all manned spaceflights, taking over the monitoring and control of these missions once the actual launch took place at the Cape.43
The Kennedy Space Center has evolved over the years, as the American space program has taken on new missions and priorities. At the NASA facilities on Merritt Island, the Vehicle Assembly Building complex supports the Space Shuttle, carrying out its final missions to support completion of the International Space Station. NASA also continues to launch a wide variety of unmanned scientific satellites. For these missions, NASA uses launch pads “borrowed” from the Air Force. The Cape Canaveral Air Station pads are also used for commercial space launches of communications and other types of satellites as well as military satellite missions. Compared to the busy Cold War years of high-volume military missile tests from the Cape, many fewer launches take place each year.44
Viewed together, the American and Russian space cities represent a stunning triumph: They are portals to the cosmos. They provide separate departure points for both robotic and manned space missions, past and present, which continue to shape our understanding of the universe, even as they have advanced science and technology. These space portals, though evolving from two radically distinct political systems in the context of the Cold War, have become legendary. Yet they bear an underlying similarity in architecture and purpose. Together they symbolize the spirit of human exploration.
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THE GREAT ESCAPE
We sometimes think about “space” as equivalent to altitude: If one goes so high, one is in space. In practical rocketry, however, reaching space is usually most concerned with attaining orbit, and this is more reliant on speed than altitude. Some of the experimental V-2 rockets launched at White Sands Missile Range rose up to the edge of space—high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth—but they fell right back down again. Science fiction aside, one does not start floating as soon as one reaches “space altitude.” Even once it has achieved the necessary speed, a vehicle will still fall like the V-2s did, but at orbital velocity it is moving forward so quickly that it “falls” around the curve of the Earth, and continues to do so. This is why astronauts in orbit experience the free-fall sensation of jumping off a diving board the entire time they are in orbit: They are literally falling the whole time. This is also why a rocket leans over sideways so soon after rising off the launch pad; it is aiming into its orbital speed run.
Orbital mechanics primarily have to do, therefore, with achieving very high velocities rather than very high altitudes. Space starts a mere 62 miles up, by international convention. Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth at an altitude of 188 miles, close to common space-shuttle mission heights, while the Apollo spacecraft used a “parking orbit” on their way to the moon at an altitude of just 115 miles. Orbital velocity for most of these missions is around 17,500 miles per hour.
Faster still than orbital velocity, “escape velocity” is the speed necessary to break free of the Earth’s gravitational pull. Whether it is a tiny satellite or a large manned spacecraft, escape velocity will be the same: about 25,000 miles per hour. In parking orbit, Apollo spacecraft used their third-stage engines to increase their speed from orbital velocity to escape velocity, to break away and begin the journey to the moon.
A rifle bullet travels at up to 2,700 mph, a fact that helps us appreciate the force needed to accelerate an entire space vehicle to 17,500 mph. That being the case, one needs all the assistance one can get. Simply choosing the location for a launch site greatly affects how much energy it will take to get a rocket into orbit, because a rocket can “borrow” speed from the rotation of the Earth itself. The Earth rotates toward the east, at a speed that varies depending on latitude. A few yards from the North Pole, the rotation speed is extremely slow, but at the Equator, the planet’s surface is moving at approximately 1,038 miles per hour. Rocket engineers are only too happy to take advantage of that fact, so rockets normally launch to the east, to build upon planetary rotational velocity. Rocketeers will also ask for their launch pads to be built as close to the Equator as possible, to gain as much free speed as possible. In 1952 Wernher von Braun reckoned
that the rotational assist factor would be so important as to require the United States to site its main launch complex on Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean.45 The high costs of transporting everything to this distant point would be offset, he imagined, by the gain in free energy provided by a more equatorial location. The rotational assist principle made novelist Jules Verne in 1865 to site his imaginary U.S. launch complex in Florida, the southernmost continental state. High logistical cost estimates for a Pacific Island site put the real NASA Kennedy Space Center in the state of Verne’s prediction, naturally on the Atlantic coast, since the launches would be toward the east.
The Florida peninsula, viewed from Apollo 7, October 1968.
The Soviets were stuck with a less advantageous geographical situation, not having any location within the U.S.S.R. that was especially southerly. For maximum rotational assist they had to settle for a remote site in Kazakhstan. At 45?57’ the Baikonur cosmodrome is at the same latitude as North Dakota. An even more northerly cosmodrome was built at Plesetsk (at the same latitude as Alaska), to serve for satellites launched in polar orbits, which could not use the rotational assist and for Soviet ICBMs. The United States built a corresponding polar orbit and missile launch site on the California coast north of Los Angeles, at Vandenberg Air Force Base.