July 24, 1950: America Gets a Spaceport

1950: Cape Canaveral, Florida, launches its first rocket.

Cape Canaveral, a name that would become synonymous with the U.S. space program by the late ’50s, was just an obscure spit of land jutting into the Atlantic Ocean along Florida’s eastern shore when, in 1948, an Air Force committee recommended its procurement for a missile testing range.

Actually, the Cape was only the committee’s second choice. But the original site in California was rejected after the Mexican government refused to let rockets traverse the air space over Baja California. (A near miss in Juarez, Mexico, where a wayward rocket from White Sands, New Mexico, crashed into a cemetery, probably influenced that decision.)

The British colonial governors of the Bahamas were not as squeamish, so Cape Canaveral got the nod. President Harry Truman inked the legislation in 1949 establishing the Joint Long Range Proving Ground at Cape Canaveral.

Aside from the clear air space, the Cape suited the needs of the military in other ways, too. Its remote location (Florida was a lot different then than it is now) and the fact that the downrange trajectory of a rocket launched eastward would be over the ocean were desirable. Also, the Cape is closer than California is to the Equator. That made it easier to launch rockets to the east, following the Earth’s rotation. Sites with similar attributes, such as Hawaii and Puerto Rico, were rejected for logistical reasons.

The first rocket to lift off from Cape Canaveral was a Bumper V-2, modified from the World War II-era German V-2s that pounded London. The two-stage rocket — using a V-2 booster topped by a WAC-Corporal second stage — was used mainly to conduct atmospheric tests. A second Bumper was launched three days later.

The installation, which originally included four launch pads and a few buildings, expanded rapidly during the early ’50s. More land was acquired, Patrick Air Force Base was established nearby, and a dizzying array of military projects followed. Gradually, though, the technical personnel at Cape Canaveral shifted away from military men and toward commercial contractors.

The Cape welcomed a new master after NASA was established to guide America’s fortunes in space. Another overhaul of the complex was ordered to accommodate NASA’s launch requirements, which were based on the enormous Saturn I rocket. Cape Canaveral, which the Defense Department had already described as being “saturated with missile-launching facilities and test instrumentation,” was essentially rebuilt. Multiple launchpads capable of handling up to 100 Saturn I launches per year were constructed, and new logistical and transportation facilities went up.

But Cape Canaveral didn’t become the Cape Canaveral we know today until President John F. Kennedy’s pivotal “We choose to go to the moon” speech in 1961. That gave NASA its raison d’etre and everything along that stretch of the Florida coast was thrown into the effort.

Following Kennedy’s assassination, former first lady Jackie Kennedy suggested to her husband’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, that renaming the space center for JFK would be a fitting memorial. LBJ went her one better, and Cape Canaveral (the name first appears on a Spanish map dating from 1564, although its actual origins remain vague) was renamed Cape Kennedy.

The new name would hold up for a decade, until 1973, when the original name was restored and the facility became the Kennedy Space Center. Which was all Jackie had ever asked for.

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