Cape Canaveral:
The Gateway to Space
The Vehicle Assembly Building (NASA Photo)
An aerial view of the Vehicle Assemble Building and surrounding facilities. (NASA) Note the LUT on the right of the picture and the Bicentennial logo opposite the flag on the VAB, which has since been replaced with a NASA "meatball."
    Until the Chinese launched Yang Liwei, their first astronaut, into space, Cape Canaveral in Florida was one of only two places in the world from which human beings have embarked on orbital flights into space. Certainly the most prominent, it easily overshadowed Bakinour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Its fame began in 1950, when the Army launch two V-2s at Cape Canaveral. The desolate spit of land on the Atlantic Ocean, isolated but just close enough to civilization, was an obvious solution for a test site for longer-ranged rockets than could easily be launched at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. During the early years of the Space Race, Cape Canaveral's more southerly latitude was an extra advantage, giving satellites launched greater initial velocity due to the faster rotation of the Earth closer to the equator.
    During the early launches and through the Mercury program, the spot of land north of Cocoa Beach was known as Cape Canaveral. However, after the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas in 1963, the place was renamed Cape Kennedy to honor the late president's memory. Later, its name was changed back to Cape Canaveral when his death no longer seemed quite as relevant. NASA's official center, the Kennedy Space Center, retains his name to this day. In reality, Kennedy Space Center is located north of Cape Canaveral on Merritt Island, but the entire area is generally referred to as Cape Canaveral, whether or not the location in question is geographically a part of the Cape. The USAF retains a launch site on Cape Canaveral proper.
    For a time, Kennedy Space Center was home to the largest building in the world, in terms of volume. This is known as the Vehicle Assembly Building. Earlier rockets had been assembled prone in a hangar, then taken out to the launch pad, hoisted upright, and fired.  Some rocket stages were pieced together on the pad. But, a large building to attach the rocket stages together seemed ideal for the Saturn V, designed to fly men to the moon. It would be constructed upright, not prone, then taken out to the pad and launched.
    The Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB for short, could easily accommodate four fully-stacked Saturn Vs. When one sees the VAB from a tour bus at present-day Kennedy Space Center, it's hard to get a feeling of scale...until one sees birds perched on the top. The birds appear as tiny specks.
    Once the Saturn V was assembled, it and the launch gantry (called the Launch Umbilical Tower, of LUT) were taken out to the launch pad, Pad 39. This was accomplished by the Crawler-Transporter, the largest tracked vehicle in the world. Eight tank like treads, with each link weighing as much as a hippopotamus, gripped the ground as the vehicle crawled its way to the launch site.
    Once at the launch pad, which was a concrete octagon, the LUT was set on four concrete posts and the Crawler-Transporter drove away. Then, another tower, this one called the Mobile Service Structure, rolled into position next to the Saturn V, providing full, wrap-around access to the rocket and the spacecraft. Ten hours before liftoff, the rocket was ready to go, and the Mobile Service Structure pulled away. The Saturn V was ready to go to the moon.
    The infrastructure of Apollo was adapted to serve the Space Shuttle when it began flight operations in 1981. Over 100 Shuttle flights have launched countless men and women into space on the reusable rocket system. In 2004, President George W. Bush announced that the Space Shuttle would be retired by the close of the decade, after the completion of the International Space Station. It remains to be seen what, if any, new designs will replace the shuttle and continue manned flights from Kennedy Space Center.