EASTERN LAUNCH FACILITIES, KENNEDY SPACE CENTER

Introduction

The Eastern Test Range (ETR) is the familiar designation of a group of bases, facilities, and installations that support space vehicle launches from Cape Canaveral Air Station (CCAS) and the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and ballistic missile test launches from or near the Cape Canaveral Air Station. It is operated by the United States Air Force’s 45th Space Wing, which provides services to itself as a launch agency as well as to the other Government and private agencies that use the launch bases at Cape Canaveral and KSC. The expression ”familiar designation” is used because the current official designation of the Range is simply the Eastern Range (ER). However, the term ”ETR” is probably used more frequently than ”ER.” The Kennedy Space Center is the popular name of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launch installation on Merritt Island as well as the name of the NASA center that manages and operates it. The formal designation of the center is the John F. Kennedy Space Center,NASA.

Eastern Test Range

The ETR, or ”The Range” as it is often called, extends from the Atlantic Coast of central Florida, including the well-known Cape Canaveral launch base and its Headquarters about 20 miles south at Patrick Air Force Base, southeast along the Bahamas, the West Indies, and on to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Recently, bases in Bermuda and Newfoundland have been added to support launches that have more northerly azimuths.
Patrick Air Force Base serves as the administrative center of the ETR and functions also as a data processing facility and as the location for some instrumentation such as radars and telemetry antennae that benefit from a different perspective of the vehicles in the early launch phase. Patrick also has an operating airfield that serves as a home base for both fixed-wing planes and helicopters supporting launches.
History. In 1946, after the end of World War II, a committee, established to determine the site of a long-range proving ground for missiles, chose Cape Canaveral, Florida, as the launch base. Actually, the Cape Canaveral site was the group’s second choice. The preferred site was El Centro, California, whose range was down the Gulf of California along the coast of Baja California. This site had several advantages, including more predictable weather and the proximity to many of the American aerospace contractors. However, the government of Mexico refused to allow overflights of Baja California. Flight along the coasts of the Bahamas from Cape Canaveral was acceptable to the British government, which then controlled the Bahamas. A third candidate, in northern Washington State that had a range along the Aleutian Islands, was rejected for reasons of weather and remote location (1).
Cape Canaveral, even as a second choice, had many advantages, both technical and administrative. As shown in Fig. 1, the area was located on a promontory extending into the Atlantic Ocean and was not near any large population centers. It would allow launch over open water but still near enough to a number of islands that could support instrumentation for tracking the missiles.
In retrospect, the Cape Canaveral option proved exceptional in a way only visionaries at the time could have foreseen. When the Space Age dawned, the easterly launch azimuth presented the designers of space launch vehicle with an additional velocity contributed by the Earth’s rotational velocity. El Centro whose launch azimuth was approximately south would not have had this advantage, and the Aleutian range that had a generally westerly azimuth would have had the penalty of having to provide additional velocity to compensate for the Earth’s rotational velocity. A secondary advantage of Cape Canaveral was its lower latitude, a consideration that became important only after the advent of geosynchronous satellites. Of course, the eventual need for polar orbiting satellites would necessitate establishing a West Coast launch base that could safely accommodate southerly launch azimuths. Interestingly, when this need was recognized, the choice of such a base was not El Centro, but the area now known as Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Figure 1. This map shows the location of Cape Canaveral on the east with respect to other Florida locations such as Tampa Bay on the west.
The new range would be a joint project of the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy under the management of the Air Force. In the course of its history, there would be several changes of name, both of the Range itself and the military organizations managing it. The managing organizations included Advance Headquarters, Joint Long Range Proving Ground; Headquarters, Long Range Proving Ground Division; Headquarters, Air Force Missile Test Center (AFMTC); Headquarters, Air Force Eastern Test Range (AFETR); Detachment 1 SAMTEC, ETR; Headquarters, Eastern Space and Missile Center (ESMC); and finally in 1991, 45th Space Wing. The Installation would also undergo a number of different designations starting with Bahamas Long Range Proving Ground, Long Range Proving Ground, and proceeding through Florida Missile Test Range, Atlantic Missile Range, and Eastern Test Range to the present title of simply Eastern Range. There were good and sufficient reasons for the changing terminology, but the basic mission of the establishment remained substantially the same as always. Some variations were necessitated by the changes of clientele from aerodynamic missiles to ballistic missiles, and to the current situation where most of the customers are involved in launching spacecraft into Earth orbit.
After sufficient preliminary work had been accomplished, the new range was ready for its first launch, which, ironically, was not one of the aerodynamic missiles for which it had been designed. On 24 June 1950, a vehicle called Bumper, a two-stage vehicle consisting of a captured German V-2 as a first stage and a liquid propellant WAC Corporal as a second stage, was launched from Complex 3. The launch, historic though it was, was not a success; the vehicle was destroyed by Range Safety. Less than a week later, a second Bumper was launched but it was not a complete success (2). Although the launches did not meet their mission objectives, there were some positive results. The launch complex was validated, the tracking devices worked, and the capability of Range Safety to destroy a potentially dangerous missile was proven.
During the next several years, many different missile projects were launched and tested at the Cape. Early projects included Lark, Matador, Mace, Snark, Bomarc, and Navajo. The Eastern Range was also the launch and test site for the Redstone, Jupiter, Thor, Polaris, Poseidon, Trident, Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman missile systems.
The coming of space vehicles was signaled by the selection of the Vanguard Earth Satellite Project which was intended to launch at least one instrumented satellite into Earth orbit as part of the U.S. contribution to the International Geophysical Year in 1957 and 1958. The Navy was selected to manage this program based partly on the Naval Research Laboratory’s experience with the Viking sounding rocket and its associated scientific payloads. Although it was assigned to the Navy, it was an essentially civilian project that would not interfere with the Department of Defense military missile projects and did not carry the high priorities assigned to those projects. After the Soviet Union launched Sputniks 1 and 2 in October and November 1957, before Vanguard had attempted to launch a full-up vehicle, the Army was directed to proceed with preparations to launch a vehicle that would add a fourth stage to the Jupiter-C and attach to the stage a small scientific satellite. After the first Vanguard attempt to orbit a satellite failed in December 1957, the Army team launched the first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, on 31 January 1958. Second attempts by both the Vanguard and Jupiter-C teams failed in February and March, before the first Vanguard success, Vanguard 1, on 17 March 1958.
The creation of NASA in October 1958 added a new presence to the Range. Immediately, the only discernible difference was the transfer of the Vanguard Project to the new agency, but soon a NASA Atlantic Missile Range Operations Office (AMROO) was established to represent NASA interests at the Range. The new NASA projects leaned heavily on the military IRBMs and ICBMs. The Delta (sometimes called Thor-Delta) was a further adaptation of the Vanguard upper stages that had the Thor as a first stage and was designed to place a variety of scientific and applications payloads into Earth orbit. NASA used a new Air Force launch vehicle, called the Atlas Agena that used the Atlas as a first stage and a new hypergolic propellant upper stage called Agena for many of its early lunar and planetary missions. The versatile Agena was also used as the upper stage for the Thor and the Titan at Vandenberg Air Force Base, but only Atlas Agena vehicles were launched from the ETR. The capability of the Atlas to place payloads into orbit without an upper stage allowed using it in NASA’s first manned space program, the well-known Mercury project. Interestingly, the early space launches followed the pattern of the aerodynamic missiles and the succeeding ballistic missiles in suffering many failures, either of the launch vehicle or of the payload after a successful launch, in the early days of spaceflight.
The next logical step in spaceflight, after demonstration of the achievability and usefulness of space as a scientific and applications medium, was the introduction of the human into the space arena as a part of the mission aloft, rather than as a ground-based operator. The first of these to impact the Range was Project Mercury, a program designed to demonstrate that humans could successfully operate in space and be safely returned to Earth. Seven suborbital flights of spacecraft without astronauts aboard were conducted using both the Redstone and the Atlas as launchers between September 1959 and March 1961. Two successful flights and one unsuccessful flight were flown aboard Atlas, and three successes and one failure were experienced with the Redstone. One sub-orbital launch, Mercury Redstone 2 (MR-2), carried as a passenger a chimpanzee nicknamed ”Ham” and resulted in a successful flight and recovery on 31 January 1961, the third anniversary of the launching of Explorer 1. The Mercury and Gemini Programs. On 5 May 1961, Astronaut Alan Shepard was launched on a Mercury Redstone 3 rocket to a range of 260 nautical miles with subsequent successful recovery of the pilot and the spacecraft Freedom 7. On 21 July of the same year, Astronaut Virgil Grissom made a similar flight aboard the spacecraft Liberty 7, although the spacecraft was not recovered.
Even before the Shepard and Grissom suborbital flights, an unsuccessful flight of an unmanned spacecraft on Mercury Atlas 3 occurred, followed by the successful flight of Mercury Atlas 4, also unmanned, on 13 September 1961. The next Mercury Atlas flight on 29 November 1961 carried the chimpanzee called “Enos” into a planned three-orbit flight with successful deorbiting and recovery of both the passenger and the spacecraft, although the flight was shortened to two orbits because of some flight anomalies. The program was now ready for the manned orbital phase that consisted of four flights of increasing duration. All resulted in successful flights and recoveries, though not without some anomalies and difficulties.
Astronaut John Glenn became America’s first man in orbit aboard Friendship 7 launched into a three-orbit mission and successful recovery on 20 February 1962 by Mercury Atlas 6. Astronaut Scott Carpenter in Aurora 7 followed on 24 May 1962 on another three-orbit mission marred by an overshoot of the intended landing area by several hundred miles. On October 3, Astronaut Walter Schirra in his Sigma 7 spacecraft flew a successful six-orbit flight with subsequent successful landing and recovery. The Mercury program concluded on 16 May 1963, when Astronaut Gordon Cooper in Faith 7 spacecraft splashed down safely after a flight of 22 orbits of the earth, 34 hours and 20 minutes after lifting off from Complex 14 aboard Mercury Atlas 9 (3).
The next step in the manned programs was the Gemini Project, which would demonstrate the capability to rendezvous and dock in space, as well as amassing more experience on manned flight to achieve longer time in orbit and at higher altitudes. The program, as indicated from its name (the name of the constellation Gemini translates to The Twins), would use a two-person spacecraft and an Agena stage, called the target vehicle, modified to achieve multiple restarts and equipped with a docking adapter, by which the Gemini and the target vehicle would be physically attached. The Gemini were boosted by a modified Titan II launch vehicle from Complex 19. The target vehicles were boosted by Atlas Agena vehicles launched from Complex 14, the same complex that was the site of the orbital Mercury launches. On 14 April 1964, less than a year after the last Mercury launch, Gemini 1, an unmanned spacecraft, was launched successfully into orbit. On 19 January 1965, a suborbital mission called Gemini 2 was also successful. Between March and August of that year, three manned flights were successfully carried out in which the number of orbits was increased from three to 120 and the apogee was increased from 121 to 188 nautical miles. The next mission was to demonstrate actual rendezvous and docking with the target vehicle, but the Agena malfunctioned and did not achieve orbit. An alternate mission involving rendezvous of two Gemini spacecraft was substituted, and the program continued while the Agena problems were addressed and solved. The program, which ran through November 1966, ultimately achieved rendezvous on that mission and on five additional missions and achieved docking with the target vehicle on four. There were difficulties with the Gemini spacecraft itself on one mission and both the target vehicle and a substitute on another, but the final three missions were all successful in rendezvous and docking and included some extravehicular activity (EVA) on all three (4).

The Eastern Range Facilities

Cape Canaveral Air Station. The heart of the ER and its predecessors is, of course, the launching area itself; without it there would be no requirement for the remainder of the ER, but it would not carry out its mission without the rest of the ER. In its own history, it has undergone a number of name changes. Originally designated as Operating Sub-Division 1, it was redesignated as Cape Canaveral Auxiliary Air Force Base in 1951, Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex in 1955, Cape Kennedy Air Force Station in 1964, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in 1974, and Cape Canaveral Air Station (CCAS) in 1990. Throughout all of the nomenclature machinations, the basic mission did not change, and the area was familiarly known as ”The Cape.”
Launch Complexes. If the raison d’etre for the ETR is the Cape, then the reason for the existence of the CCAS is the collection of the launch complexes located there. Typically, a launch complex consists of a launch pad, a service structure, an umbilical mast or structure, and a launch control center.
The launch pad is the platform on which the missile rests during launch preparations and from which it is actually launched. This platform contains a multiplicity of connections to the vehicle. Fluid connections and the necessary controls are included to load propellants into the vehicle and to unload in case of a launch delay or at the conclusion of a servicing or ”tanking” test. Pneumatic connections are included to allow loading gases used as pressurants or in small control devices. There are also electrical connections that allow controlling vehicle functions remotely during launch preparations and instrumentation connections for monitoring the state of the vehicle and pad systems.
The service structure, variously and familiarly known as a gantry or a tower, gives workers access to the vehicle during launch preparations and can be of assistance in positioning and assembling the vehicle on the launch pad. Typically this structure has a number of platforms that allow circumferential and vertical access to the assembled vehicle. Necessarily, the service structure must be removed to a safe distance for the actual launch, so many of these platforms must either fold or retract to allow movement of the structure. Most service structures are mounted on railroad type wheels that allow movement to the retired positions on permanent tracks. Some projects have used service structures that can be rotated from the vertical to the horizontal to the vertical for assembling the vehicle, serve as a series of work platforms for prelaunch activities, and then rotate from the vertical to the horizontal before final launch preparations.
Some functions, which for reasons of accessibility cannot be routed through the launch platform, must be maintained even after the service structure has been retired or rotated away from the vehicle. These are typically accomplished by a connection on a mast that remains near the vehicle even after the service structure is withdrawn. These are generally referred to as ”umbilical” masts or towers. The connections are severed either by movement of the vehicle at liftoff or by a mechanism on the mast itself, which senses liftoff and initiates disconnect. Originally, umbilical masts were rather flimsily constructed and had to be replaced after each launch. Recent improvement in materials and design have made possible permanent umbilical towers that require minimum refurbishment after each launch.
The launch control center, commonly called the blockhouse, was generally a heavily reinforced structure from which most prelaunch launch operations were supervised and from which the launch crew directed the actual launch. It provided a safe environment for the launch crew to direct operations during final launch and during other hazardous operations.
Other installations on a launch complex might include propellant tanks, both cryogenic, such as liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, which must be stored at high pressure to maintain the liquid state; so-called storable propellants, such as hydrazine and nitric acid, that can be kept at ambient temperatures: the necessary fluid lines and controls to load and unload the vehicle; and pressurant tanks that typically contain liquid or gaseous nitrogen for maintaining so-called blanket pressures in tankage when empty.
The following is a listing of the launch complexes at the Cape and a description of the projects which used them, some of the majors events associated with them, and their current status. Complexes were given numerical designations, 1, 2, 3, etc. Generally, if a complex has two launch pads they were designated A and B although there were some exceptions to this practice. Some complexes were planned but never built. This accounts for the fact that some numbers are not listed. Most of the complexes that are still active or play a noteworthy role other than for launching are mentioned specifically.
Complexes 1 and 2 were constructed for the Snark winged missile program and also supported some launches of the Matador, another aerodynamic missile. These complexes remained active until 1960.
Complexes 3 and 4 were designed to support the interceptor missile Bomarc. Complex 3, however, did support the Cape’s first launches—those of the Bumpers in April 1950. It was later used by other projects, including the X-17 used to test reentry nose cones, some early Redstones, and some Polaris operations.
Complex 5 and Complex 6 were used for the Redstone project, an Army ballistic missile whose range was approximately 200 miles. There were two launch pads with a common blockhouse, and the facility was usually called Complex 5/6 or simply 56. The complex is best known as the site of all six Mercury Redstone missions, including that of America’s first man in space, Alan Shepard, and the subsequent flight of Virgil (Gus) Grissom. It was also used for several early Explorer and Pioneer missions, including the first successful American lunar flyby mission by Pioneer 4 launched by a Juno 11 on 3 March 1959.
Complexes 9 and 10 were used for the long-range, rocket-booted, ram jet powered aerodynamic missile Navaho.
Complex 11 was used for the Atlas ICBM. It was also the site of the first orbital use of the Atlas. On 18 December 1958, almost the entire Atlas, minus jettisoned booster section, was placed into orbit as Project SCORE. The vehicle was equipped with communications equipment which was used to broadcast President Eisenhower’s Christmas greeting to the world from space.
Complex 12 was used for the numerous Atlas ICBM launches and for two unsuccessful launches of multistage Atlas Able vehicles on projected lunar missions in 1960. NASA’s flights of the Ranger Program, designed to take a series of television views of the Moon before impact, were launched from here as were several Mariner missions that flew by Venus and Mars. The first Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO) and two Orbiting Geophysical Observatories (OGO) were launched from Complex 12. Some OGOs were launched from the Western Test Range into near circular polar orbits; they were nicknamed POGO for Polar Orbiting Geophysical Observatory to distinguish them from the ETR launched OGOs which were nicknamed EGO for Eccentric Orbiting Observatory. The first three Applications Technology Satellites were also launched from here.
Complex 13 was used by both the USAF and NASA for their Atlas Agena launches. The USAF launches were usually classified missions; NASA missions launched from Complex 13 included one OGO/EGO and five Lunar Orbiter missions that provided photographic coverage of most of the Moon’s surface in support of the Apollo Program.
Complex 14 was used for the Atlas ICBM project and for the NASA Atlas Mercury Project. It was also used for an unsuccessful launch of a lunar mission by the Atlas Able vehicle in November 1959. The Atlas Agena target vehicles for the Gemini Program were launched from here.
Complexes 15 and 16 were used for the Titan ICBM program. Complex 16 was also used for the Pershing solid propellant missile.
Complex 17 was designed for the Thor Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile. It has also been used for the Thor-Able, Thor Able Star and Delta launches by the USAF, NASA, and Boeing (formerly McDonnell Douglas). The Boeing usage is for commercial and government contracted launches. Current vehicles still being launched at Complex 17 include both Delta 2 and Delta 3 vehicles. Complex 17 stands ahead of all other complexes on the Cape in the number of missile and space launches. From the first Thor launch in January 1957 through the end of 1998, the complex supported 276 launches. The number of first and spectacular missions is so large that only a few can be mentioned, with the obvious danger of omitting some equally outstanding in some opinions. From a technological point of view, the first restart of an upper stage flight in flight, that of the Able Star second stage on the launch of the Transit 1B Navy’s navigation satellite on 13 April 1960, is important. TIROS 1 (for Television Infrared Observation Satellite), America’s first weather observation satellite, was launched by a Thor Able on 1 April 1960. The active communications satellite Telestar 1, the world’s first privately owned satellite was launched on a Delta on 10 July 1962. SYNCOMs 2 and 3 and Intelsat 1 are important milestones in the development of geosynchronous satellites. The Mars Pathfinder mission, with the Rover Sojourner, launched on 4 December 1996, is a more recent accomplishment. A 1991 aerial view of Complex 17 is shown in Fig. 2. This photo was taken from the east (Atlantic Ocean) side and shows the two service towers around two Delta vehicles being prepared for launch. The solid propellant strap-on motors are clearly visible on the vehicle on Pad 17B, to the viewer’s left.
Complex 18, a two-pad complex, was built for the Thor IRBM program. When the Navy’s Vanguard Earth Satellite project for the International Geophysical Year was established with a short lead time until its first launch in 1956, arrangements were made with the Air Force for the new program to share Complex 18. All 14 Vanguards were launched from Pad 18A, Thors were launched from 18B, and the blockhouse and other facilities were shared. The Air

Figure 2. Complex 17, which is still active, is shown in the 1991 photograph, taken from the east. Note the Delta vehicle on the left pad, 17B. Even though the service structure surrounds the vehicle, the thrust augmenting boosters are visible. The wedge-shaped blockhouse is located at the intersection of the covered cable trenches running west from each pad (USAF photo).
Force later used the complex for launches of the Blue Scout, a version of NASA’s four-stage solid propellant launch vehicle.
Complexes 19 and 20 were built for the Titan ICBM projects. Complex 19 was also the launch site of the NASA Gemini two-person spacecraft. Complex 20 was modified to accommodate the Titan IIIA, which consisted of the two liquid stages of the upcoming heavy-lift IIIC space launch vehicle. Four successful launches of the Titan IIIA were successfully conducted by May 1965, after which the complex was deactivated.
Complexes 21 and 22 were built for the USAF Bull Goose decoy missile program and were also used by the Matador follow-on program called MACE.
Complexes 25 and 29 were built for the Navy’s Fleet Ballistic Missile Program. Launches of Polaris, Poseidon, and Trident I took place here.
Complex 26, a two-pad complex, was built for the Army’s Jupiter IBM and Army/NASA Juno space programs. It was the site of the launch of the first U.S. Earth satellite, Explorer I, on 31 January 1958. The successful flight and recovery of the two space monkeys, Able and Miss Baker began from Complex 26 on 29 May 1959 (5). Complex 26 was declared a national historic landmark in 1964.
Complex 30 was a dual launch pad used for the Army’s solid propellant Pershing missile program.
Complexes 31 and 32 were built for the USAF solid propellant multistage Minuteman ICBM. They included both surface and below ground (silo) launch capability.
Complexes 34 and 37 were built for NASA’s Saturn 1 and 1B heavy-lift space vehicles. They were the sites of five vehicle development launches of these vehicles, some of which carried payloads as secondary objectives. Complex 34 was the site of two suborbital launches of Apollo hardware, as well as the launch Apollo 7, the first manned orbital flight in the program. It also has the unenviable distinction of being the site of the fatal spacecraft fire that took the lives of Astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee. Complex 37 saw the orbital launches of five unmanned tests of Apollo hardware. Complex 37 has been assigned to Boeing under the Air Force contract for its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV).
Complex 36, built for the Atlas Centaur space vehicle, has two pads, 36A and 36B. The first stage of the rocket is a modified Atlas, and the second stage (Centaur) is the first successful cryogenic (hydrogen/oxygen) upper stage. It has been used by NASA for a number of space launches, including lunar and planetary missions. It is still in regular use for USAF missions and by the Lockheed Martin Corporation (formerly General Dynamics) for commercial launches and for NASA contracted launches. The Surveyor soft landing missions to the Moon in the early 1960s; the interplanetary Pioneer 10 and 11 missions to Jupiter, Saturn, and eventually out of the solar system; Mariner missions to Mercury, Venus, and Mars, as well as a number of commercial and government communications satellites were among the many launches from Complex 36.
Complex 39 is at the Kennedy Space Center. It was designed for the Apollo program’s Saturn V lunar launch vehicle and was also used for the Saturn 1B vehicles used in the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz Test Program launches. It has been modified for Space Shuttle requirements and is still in regular use. It will be discussed further in the section of this article called The Kennedy Space Center.
Complexes 40 and 41 were built for the USAF’s Titan IIIC space vehicle program; construction was completed in 1965. This approach, sometimes called ITL, for Integrate, Transfer, and Launch, was a new concept for the Cape. The core vehicle consisting of two Titan stages and upper stages were assembled and prepared in the Vertical Integration Building (VIB) on a platform on wheels that also served as the launch vehicle and launch umbilical tower. This part of the whole assembly was then transported by locomotives to the Solid Motor Assembly Building (SMAB) where the two large solid motor boosters, already checked out in the SMAB, were attached to the core. This assembly was further transported on the rails to the launch pad itself where the launch platform was secured in place. A service structure was provided at the pad to facilitate payload installation and final preparations for launch. The VIB was located several miles from both the SMAB and the launch pad, so it could be used as laboratory and office space without the personnel constraints of the traditional blockhouses or launch control centers. Complex 41 was modified to accept NASA’s Centaur upper stage for the NASA Titan Centaur Viking Mars lander/orbiter program and Voyager outer planets program and the joint Germany/US Helios solar research program in the 1970s. Complexes 40 and 41 have been further modified to accept the larger USAF Titan 4 vehicle that can accommodate either a Centaur upper stage or the solid propellant Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) or can accomplish certain missions without an upper stage above the Titan IV core vehicle. They are still used by the USAF for military missions and by Lockheed Martin for either commercial launches or for NASA spacecraft launches. Complex 41 will be used by Lockheed Martin under the Air Force contract for its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) after the Air Force’s need for the complex for Titan IV launches. Some other facilities in the ITL and elsewhere on the Cape have been assigned to either Lockheed Martin or to Boeing for their EELV programs.
Complex 46 was built between 1984 and 1986 to support the Navy’s Trident II ballistic missile program. Between January 1987 and 1989, 19 Trident II launches were conducted from this complex. With no new Trident requirements for the complex forthcoming, Spaceport Florida Authority (SFA), with the aid of an Air Force grant, redesigned the complex to accommodate small commercial space launch operations. The completed complex has been used by Lockheed Martin for launches of variants of its Athena space launch vehicles for such missions as NASA’s Lunar Prospector and the commercial/international ROCSAT for the Republic of China Satellite (6).
Industrial Area and Missile Assembly Buildings (Hangars). The launch complexes are the heart of the launch base, but they could not exist without a myriad of other functions and facilities at Cape Canaveral. Many of the functions are provided in the Industrial Area, which is located a safe distance from the launch complexes. These include such prosaic things as cafeterias, dispensaries, office buildings, distribution of utilities such as water, electricity, communications and sewage, maintenance of roads and grounds, security, fire protection, and janitorial services to give a few examples. Less prosaic features of the Industrial Area are the Missile Assembly Buildings as well as spacecraft and space payload preparation buildings.
An obvious need exists for a facility to receive the launch vehicle from the factory, inspect and refurbish it, and prepare it for transfer to the launch complex for launch, as well as to store missiles not yet ready for flight or awaiting a pad assignment. These functions are accomplished in Missile Assembly Buildings commonly referred to simply as hangars. In the early hurry-up days of the missile programs, a standardized structure, essentially an aircraft hangar, was provided by the Range to incoming projects. The use of a standardized building expedited the availability of the hangars for the new projects which were typically operating under high priority and accelerated schedules. The typical hangar had an area of about 41,000 square feet. A high bay area with a number of cranes was included along with large sliding doors at both ends of the hangar. On each side of the high bay was a two-story concrete block structure. This could be used by the project for offices, guidance laboratories, telemetry and data labs, etc. The office and lab spaces were generally air conditioned because of the hot and moist coastal Florida climate; the high bay areas themselves were not air conditioned; environmental control for the high bay consisted of opening and closing the large doors.
Propellant Storage and Explosion Proof Areas. There are functions that are neither compatible with the industrial area nor is it feasible to locate them near the complexes where their work may be interrupted by launch activity. Such facilities include propellant storage areas and explosion proof areas. Those launch complexes using propellants such as RP-1, a kerosene-like substance used as a fuel in many launch vehicles; liquid oxygen, a cryogenic oxidizer used in conjunction with RP-1; liquid hydrogen, a cryogenic fuel used in some space vehicle stages; and other commodities such as liquid and gaseous nitrogen and liquid helium maintained storage vessels in the complexes for direct servicing of the vehicle during countdown. It is, however, the responsibility of the ETR to maintain sufficient quantities of these commodities to keep the storage tanks at operational levels. At one time, the ETR actually operated a LOX (familiar name for liquid oxygen) and LIN (familiar name for liquid nitrogen) manufacturing plant on Cape Canaveral. They are now supplied commercially, but the ETR is responsible for maintaining supplies and facilities to fill project needs.
Other projects use storable, that is, noncryogenic, liquid propellants sometimes as either the principal propellants for the missile stages or as the propel-lants for upper stages or spacecraft. The principal fuel of this type is a hydrazine variety, and the usual oxidizer is a form of nitric acid. For some projects, these propellants can be loaded into the vehicle well in advance of the actual launch countdown, so that there is no need for last minute loading capability at the complex as that for cryogenic propellants. Other projects prefer to load these propellants during the launch countdown and maintain on-pad facilities to maintain strict temperature control and to measure the load precisely. The ETR maintains storage facilities for the commodities and delivers them to the complexes as needed.
Solid propellant launch vehicles such as Minuteman and Pershing included storage facilities for these motors in their launch complexes. However, the need in space vehicles for solid propellant upper stages for actual spacecraft injection into orbit dictates that a facility for storing such motors be provided until the motors enter the actual processing flow which is normally when the solid motor is mated to the spacecraft. The use of solid propellant strap-on motors in the first stages of space launch vehicles to increase performance has resulted in the need for storage facilities for many such items until they enter the launch preparation flow. The ETR operates such storage facilities for the various Range users.
The advent of sophisticated satellites that have their own propulsion and controls system dictated the need for explosion proof areas where satellites could be fueled and their control systems serviced. Other such facilities accommodated the mating of a spacecraft to a solid propellant upper stage and sometimes a dynamic balancing of a spin-stabilized upper stage/satellite combination. Safety concerns dictated locating such facilities in relatively remote areas of the Cape.
Range Control Center. As the blockhouse or launch control center is the focal point for the actual launches, so is the Range Control Center the focal point for all of the functions that the ETR performs to support a project, as well as the center of its own mission of providing Range Safety. Here, all the information is gathered that is necessary for the ETR to ascertain that it is ready to perform its functions for a launch. Ground safety and security must verify that the launch danger area is clear; instrumentation coordinators must ascertain that the necessary radars, telemetry sites, and other instrumentation necessary for either the project requirements and safety monitoring are ready; and range safety officers must verify that there are no ships or aircraft in the prohibited areas and that the instrumentation required for the range safety function is operational.
These operations are coordinated by such officials as the Superintendent of Range Operations (SRO), Range Control Officer (RCO), and the Range Safety Officer (RSO). In earlier days, this building was in the heart of the industrial area, but it has been replaced by a new facility near the south end of the Cape.
A historical footnote to the reporting of status by instrumentation sites involves the famous expression “AOK” which is now generally attributed to the manned space program. Actually, this term has been in use at least at the ETR for many years before the manned space programs. When asked for readiness to support over communications circuits from remote sites, the operators at the sites had a choice of three replies. AOK meant that the site was operational and that it would support its requirements. CNY meant that the site was not operational and did not expect to be operational for the operation: BEX meant that the site could not meet its requirements at the time of the report but that it anticipated that it would be operational by the time its support was scheduled. The use of three letters for each readiness condition was intended to assist in recognizing the status signal over potentially noisy communications circuits. Skid Strip. The landing strip is another prominent feature of the Cape. It was built in the early 1950s for the Navaho X-10 test vehicle. It was used in the mid 1950s as a landing area for Snark missiles which might be reused after successfully landing. The Snarks were equipped with landing skids instead of wheels; hence the name skid strip. Originally a 10,000 x 200 foot configuration, it has since been widened to 300 feet, resurfaced, and expanded to include a tax-iway and a parking apron (7). It is frequently used for cargo aircraft delivering launch vehicles and spacecraft to the launch site. The skid strip has also been used by passenger aircraft bringing distinguished visitors to the USAF and NASA areas for tours or for observing important launches. The skid strip can be seen clearly in Fig. 3, an aerial view of the Cape.
Downrange and Tracking Stations. As early as 1954, the Eastern Test Range had three tracking sites equipped with tracking, telemetry, or photographic instrumentation. There was launch coverage instrumentation at the launch site at Cape Canaveral, and there were additional stations at Jupiter Auxiliary Air Force Base south of Cape Canaveral on the Florida mainland and at Grand Bahama Island in the Bahamas. Additional stations usually called Auxiliary Air Force bases were soon added on the islands of Eleuthera, San Salvador, Mayaguana, and Grand Turk in the British West Indies; in the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola, and at Mayaguez in Puerto Rico. A submarine cable was incrementally constructed connecting all of the stations and was completed in December 1956. Some instrumentation was also located at Patrick Air Force Base to afford different viewing angles than was possible from the Cape itself during the launch phase.
The distance covered by these stations (about 1200 miles from the Cape to Mayaguez) was sufficient for the early programs. However, when the much longer range aerodynamic Snark and Navaho missile programs were approved, much longer distances had to be accommodated. Antigua and St. Lucia in the Lesser Antilles and Ascension Island, approximately 5000 miles from the Cape in the South Atlantic, were selected, and negotiations with the British governments ensued. A fourth at Fernando de Noronha, an island off the coast of Brazil, was also selected, and an agreement with the Brazilian government was negotiated.

Figure 3. A 1961 aerial photograph of the Cape, with North at the top, showing the Skid Strip in the center, the various launch pads generally along the coast of the Cape, and the Industrial Area to the left of the west end of the Skid Strip.
Antigua, St. Lucia, and Ascension were operational in 1958, and Fernando, as it was usually called, became operational in the summer of 1958. Even with the additional range stations, there were areas, where air breathing vehicles at relatively low altitudes, could not be tracked by land-based instrumentation. As many as 12 small telemetry ships were positioned downrange to cover the gaps between the island-based instrumentation. As a matter of history, the ETR supported its first 5000-mile long mission (a Snark test flight) in October 1957 (8).
Although the Snark and Navaho programs were the impetus for extending the range, the new Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) such as the Army’s Jupiter and the Air Force’s Thor, as well as the Intercontinental Range Ballistic Missile (ICBMs) such as the Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman programs, after a slow start, eventually became major range users. A few years later, the new space vehicles became the largest users in terms of launches, and the Navy’s Trident program remains a major user. Ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles that have higher trajectories than aerodynamic missiles could be tracked continuously from fewer stations, allowing the phase out of some down-range stations as the workload shifted from aerodynamics to ballistic and space launches. There have also been some notable additions to ”downrange.” Additional ships that have more sophisticated instrumentation were added and subtracted as workloads varied. Instrumented aircraft were also added that operated from bases in South Africa and Mahe in the Indian Ocean.
The downrange stations were usually officially designated as Auxiliary Air Force Bases, but there was frequently only one military person on site, usually an Air Force Officer, who held the title of Base Commander and among whose many duties was dealing as United States Government official with the local authorities. In the early days of Range operations, there was a Base Manager, an employee of the Range contractor (for many years Pan American World Airways) who ran the day-to-day operations of the station except for the instrumentation. A person called the Instrumentation Manager was an employee of Pan Am’s instrumentation subcontractor, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Service Company. Most of the personnel at a downrange station were either from the Air Force, Pan Am, or RCA, although indigenous personnel were employed where feasible. For simplicity, the terms Pan Am and RCA are used here rather than trying to trace the various contracting and subcontracting schemes used during the history of the Range.
Range Instrumentation. The Range used a variety of instrumentation in its host responsibility of providing data to the Range users and in its own responsibility of ensuring that the launched vehicles did not pose a hazard to life or property. Trajectory information for both purposes was principally obtained by radars that tracked a transponder or beacon in the vehicle. These radars were also capable of echo or skin tracking, but the use of airborne beacons improved both the range to which something could be tracked and the accuracy of the data. There were other tracking devices used ranging from very complicated systems to such simple devices as optical gunsights and wire sky screens for close tracking, but precision tracking radars were the principal means for obtaining trajectory data. Telemetry antennas of varying sophistication were another important asset provided by the Range.
Command/control as used today is principally a method of either terminating the thrust of an errant vehicle or initiating an airborne destruct package in a vehicle if it has malfunctioned. This is the common conception of command/ control, but there have been launch vehicle projects which have used this system to operate some vehicle systems usually as a backup to an airborne system.
Range Support and Safety. The preparation and launch of missiles, space launch vehicles, and spacecraft are potentially dangerous, so each participant in the process has a serious responsibility for safe conduct of such operations. The vehicle or spacecraft manufacturer or contractor, as well as the sponsoring agency, typically have safety organizations, but the Range as host has the overall responsibility for operations conducted on its facilities. To carry out this responsibility, the Range requires of its tenants detailed information about such hazardous items as pressure vessels, pyrotechnic devices, radioactive sources, and propellants that are used.
In the exercise of its responsibility to ensure flight safety, the Range requires each project to equip its vehicles with devices to assist real-time tracking by the Range, explosive or other means to either stop propellant flow (cutoff) or actually to destroy the vehicle (destruct), and receivers in the vehicle to accept cutoff and destruct radio-frequency signals from the ground and transmit these received signals to the appropriate devices. In perhaps overly simple terms, the Range Safety Officer (RSO) is presented with a plotting board display or display that shows the actual trajectory as measured by a tracking radar, for instance, and the predicted instantaneous impact point of a vehicle if thrust were terminated at a given instant. These are overlaid on a prepared chart showing such things as the nominal trajectory, the estimated normal deviation from the nominal, lines showing what areas are to be protected, and lines showing how far from the protected areas pieces of a destroyed vehicle might travel because of such factors as their size and density or human reaction time.
The RSO is also presented with other data, such as telemetry, indicating the performance of the vehicle. If the RSO determines that a flight is performing unsafely or that it will violate destruct criteria, the RSO can send appropriate signals to the vehicle which, when received by the command receivers aboard, will initiate cutoff and/or destruct (9).
Meteorological support is another important service of the Range. Even relatively routine information such as temperature, precipitation, and winds becomes vital when certain operations are scheduled. For instance, hoisting a spacecraft to the top of a launch vehicle by a crane cannot be done in high winds. The safety function of the Range itself demands certain ceiling and visibility minimums to allow optical tracking and observation of a launched vehicle early in flight. Weather balloon data on weather aloft is provided to the projects to allow determining whether such things as wind velocity and shear might compromise their control systems. Lightning data and prediction is important to both ground tasks and to launch operations. Activities on launch complexes are understandably restricted during thunderstorms. It is also necessary to know the state of the atmosphere aloft before a launch, so that a rising vehicle would not trigger lightning as it passed through dangerous levels.
In addition to the support given to launches from the ETR and KSC, the Range is called upon to support launches from ships and from submarines in the Navy’s Polaris, Poseidon, and Trident ballistic missile programs. Support has also been rendered to United Kingdom submarine launches. Airborne launches of the Air Force’s Hound Dog air-to-ground missile were a frequent customer between 1959 and 1965. Seventy-seven Hound Dogs were launched from B-52 aircraft over the Range in that period. Support was also given to Skybolt, the proposed, but eventually canceled, successor to Hound Dog in the early 1960s. The Range has also given some support to the European Space Agency’s Kourou launch site in French Guiana. Recently support has been given to the air-launched Pegasus space launch vehicle.

Kennedy Space Center

Introduction. The Kennedy Space Center (KSC) consists of almost 84,000 acres and an additional area of about 56,000 acres of submerged, formerly state-owned land. The location of the Kennedy Space Center with respect to Cape Canaveral is shown in Fig. 4.
Like the Eastern Test Range, KSC has undergone changes of name in both of its definitions. Organizationally, it was originally the Launch Operations

Directorate (LOD) of the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville,

Alabama. MSFC was created in December 1958 when the Development Operations Division, including the Missile Firing Laboratory at Cape Canaveral, of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama was transferred to NASA. In July 1962, LOD was raised to the status of an independent NASA Center and became the Launch Operations Center (LOC). After President Kennedy’s death in 1963, the name was changed to the John F. Kennedy Space Center, NASA. This is usually shortened to Kennedy Space Center, or simply KSC. As a physical entity, the area was originally called the Merritt Island Launch Area (MILA); that eventually also became the Kennedy Space Center.
There were other NASA elements operating in the Cape Canaveral area in this period. The Navy’s Vanguard Project was transferred to the Beltsville Space Flight Center (soon renamed Goddard Space Flight Center) of NASA when that new agency was created on 1 October 1958. The Cape-based Vanguard Operations Group (VOG) became the Field Projects Branch of GSFC and later the Goddard Launch Operations Division, which eventually assumed launch responsibility for Delta, Atlas Agena, and Atlas Centaur launches at the Cape, as well as for Thor Agena launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The coming of the Mercury program to the Cape brought a detachment of the Space Task Group to Florida to support the Mercury Redstone and Mercury Atlas launches. This group eventually became the Florida Operations Group of the new Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston. This was later renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC). This Florida Operations Group was transferred to the Kennedy Space Center in December 1964 after the conclusion of the Mercury program and before the first manned launch in the Gemini program.
The Atlantic Missile Range Operations Office which had been the official conduit for NASA’s support requirements to the Range and the Range’s commitment to support NASA was disbanded, and its functions were taken over by KSC’s NASA Test Support Office at Patrick Air Force Base. The consolidation of NASA launch elements in Florida under KSC was finalized in October 1965 when the Goddard Launch Operations Division was transferred to KSC and became the Unmanned Launch Operations Directorate.

Figure 4. The geographical relationship of KSC, the Cape, and the surrounding communities in 1971. This drawing shows some facilities which had been planned but never built, such as Pad 42 (NASA photo).
The Apollo Program. The Apollo program was NASA’s implementation of President Kennedy’s declaration of 25 May 1961 that America ”should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth.” At this time, there was no launch vehicle of sufficient power to do this, no spacecraft to take astronauts to the surface of the Moon and get them back to Earth, and no facility from which to launch the vehicle and spacecraft. The launch vehicle task fell largely to MSFC, and the spacecraft portion was assigned to MSC/JSC. The task of establishing a base for preparing and launching these elements clearly belonged to KSC.
Even though the launch vehicle, which would emerge as the Saturn V, had not been finally designed, it was clear that its size would preclude the possibility of using an existing Cape complex or of building a new complex on the Cape. A joint DOD/NASA task group pondered the question locating the launch base, and, after considering alternatives, including sites in Hawaii, Texas, California, Georgia, and islands in the Caribbean, selected Merritt Island. Other sites offered some appealing characteristics, but Merritt Island offered the opportunity to use many of the existing capabilities of the Atlantic Missile Range (AMR), and it allowed LOC/KSC to continue operating on the Cape at the same time as the Merritt Island Launch Area (MILA) was being built.
Complex 39 and the Vehicle Assembly Building. It was decided that the vehicle and its launch platform would be integrated vertically in a ”hangar” on MILA to minimize time on the pad. The Apollo spacecraft elements would be checked out in the MILA industrial area and mated with the launch vehicle before the entire combination of launch vehicle, spacecraft, and launcher would be transported to the pad in the vertical position. There would be the capability of returning the combination to the hangar in case of weather or technical problems. The hangar, which would be larger than any existing one to accommodate the eventual 363-foot launch vehicle, is now known as the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). Its dimensions are 716 feet in length, 518 feet in width, and 526 feet in height. The VAB consisted of a high bay containing four bays or checkout cells, each large enough to accommodate a mobile launcher carrying a fully assembled space vehicle; a transfer aisle between the pairs of checkout cells; considerable office space, and a low bay for work on individual stages and components. A multiplicity of lifting devices as large as the two 250-ton bridge cranes with hook heights of 462 feet were included. Upward telescoping doors on each cell allowed access from and to the outside of the building. Only three of the high bay cells in the VAB were activated.
Operations in the VAB and at each of the two launch pads were controlled by personnel in the Launch Control Center (LCC) constructed to the southeast of the VAB. Not to be confused with most launch control centers or blockhouses on the Cape, this was a four-level building whose function was to check out the vehicle during preparations both in the VAB and at the launch pad. It was about three and a half miles from the pads, so it was not in the danger area and could provide support, such as offices, labs, data stations, and even a cafeteria, in addition to the actual control rooms called firing rooms. There were four of these firing rooms provided but, like the cells in the VAB, only three were fully equipped. A cable way and a personnel access corridor were provided between the third level of the LCC and the VAB.
The launch pads themselves were a major construction feat. Because the selected area was marshy, as was much of MILA, the entire pad had to be elevated with the bottom of the flame trench at ground level. Beneath the surface of the elevated pad were four floors containing terminal connection rooms, high-pressure gas systems, and emergency egress rooms for the astronaut crew and the pad close-out crew. A water system to cool the flame from the rocket engines was also there. Propellant storage tanks and other facilities similar, except in size, to Cape complexes for liquid fueled projects were also included within the pad perimeter. Pads 39A and 39B are essentially identical; several identical pads were planned at one time but were never built.
Essential to the mobile concept of operations were the mobile launchers, transportable steel structures that moved the Saturn V launch vehicles from the VAB to the launch pad. Three identical mobile launchers were built, each 445 feet tall and weighing 12,600,000 pounds when carrying an unfueled Apollo Saturn stack. The launcher consisted of a two-level base whose area is about a half acre and an umbilical tower capped by a 25-ton hammerhead crane. The bases contained a computer linked to counterparts in the firing rooms. The umbilical tower provided work platforms; swing arms that were disconnected automatically at liftoff; and distribution lines for propellant, pneumatic, electrical, and instrumentation functions. The highest swing arm, Number 9, 320 feet above the base connected with the Apollo spacecraft and was used by the astronauts to enter the command module. The base also provided hold-down arms that precluded motion of the vehicle after engine ignition until it was determined that all engines were operating satisfactorily. A rectangular opening in the launcher base allowed exhaust from the first stage engines to vent into a flame trench at the pad.
The launcher and the vehicle had to be moved from the VAB to the pad. After such concepts as barge transport, a rail system, and even pneumatic tired transporters and air cushion devices were considered and discarded, the choice was made of a crawler rolling on eight tracks that had a propulsion system similar to some used in strip mining. Two of these were procured. In addition to its transporting function, the crawlers could lift the entire stack to disengage it from the 22-foot pedestals in the VAB and lower it to similar pedestals at the pad after transport. The combined mass of the crawler, launcher, and unfueled Apollo Saturn was about 18 million pounds.
The highway for the crawlers to transverse with their burdens is the crawlerway, a two-lane road with a grass median to be straddled by the crawler. This highway is not paved but constructed of materials that can bear the intended weight without permanent deformation. The actual surface is Alabama river rock that minimized friction on the crawler treads. About halfway between the VAB and Pad 39A, an extension of the crawlerway turns northeast and goes to PAD 39B.
Another major element was the Mobile Service Structure (MSS), a 410-foot, 10,500,000-pound structure designed to give 360° access to the space vehicle and outfitted with air conditioning, elevators, computers as well as television instrumentation, communications, and power systems. It was removed from the pad by the crawler about 7 hours before liftoff and placed at its park site along the crawlerway. It was mobile and was removed from the danger area before launch, so only one mobile service structure was built to service both pads.
The size of the Saturn V and Apollo components required a new look at delivering them to the launch site. Earlier programs delivered either by road or by transport aircraft. The first and second stages were transported by barge from MSFC in Huntsville, Alabama. The third stage, the instrument unit, and the Apollo spacecraft, were delivered in a specially modified aircraft, called the Guppy.
Air transported components landed at the Cape’s Skid Strip and were transported overland to the VAB. The barge method required constructing, on MILA, a dock and turning basin near the VAB, inclusion of draw spans on bridges, constructing a lock between Port Canaveral on the Atlantic Ocean and the Banana River, and considerable dredging.
The KSC Industrial Area. In addition to the Complex 39A area, there was a need for an industrial area for much of the same purposes as the Cape industrial area. One important difference was that there were no hangars in the KSC industrial area; essentially all work on the vehicles themselves was done at Complex 39. There still remained the requirement for administration and data gathering facilities as well as for a Flight Crew Training Building and for a building to prepare the command, service, and lunar modules. The Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building, a multistoried structure with a high bay checkout area 100 feet high and 234 feet long and an adjacent low bay checkout area 251 feet long was constructed to fulfill this last requirement. Salient features in the high bay were two altitude chambers each 50 feet high and 30 meters in diameter, which allowed checking out the Apollo spacecraft in near vacuum. The O&C also had a large and more conventional portion separate from the checkout area but connected by above-ground access corridors. The north portion of the O&C contained offices, laboratories, a weather station, and astronaut quarters. The first NASA occupants of the KSC Industrial Area were members of the MSC’s Florida Operations Group that moved much of its operation from Hangar S on the Cape to the O&C building in the fall of 1964, even before that group was part of KSC. Completion of other buildings in the industrial area, including the Headquarters Building, the Central Instrumentation Facility, a Training Auditorium and the Base Operations building, followed soon after. Apollo Operations. Even while all this preparation for the eventual Moon landings was going on at KSC, work on the project was proceeding on the Cape at Complexes 34 and 37. Orbital launches of boiler plate or dummy Command and Service Modules (CSMs) were conducted as early as 1964 by Saturn 1 vehicles and continued through July 1965. Suborbital tests of CSMs were conducted using Saturn 1B vehicles in 1966. The success of all of these tests led up to preparations for the first manned launch of a CSM from Complex 34 using the Saturn 1B vehicle AS (for Apollo Saturn) 204 and CSM 012. The 27 January 1967 fire in the spacecraft during a simulated countdown took the lives of Astronauts Gris-som, White, and Chaffee. Modifications of hardware and procedures were made, which culminated in a successful orbital launch of SA 205 carrying a redesigned CSM 101 with astronauts Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham. This was the last manned launch from the Cape, and Complexes 34 and 37 were deactivated.
The history of the Apollo Program with its successes, especially the accomplishment of the first manned lunar landing within President Kennedy’s schedule and its difficulties, including the disastrous AS-204 spacecraft fire and the harrowing flight of Apollo 13, is well known and is covered elsewhere (10). The launch of Apollo 11 on 16 July 1969, which culminated in the first manned lunar landing and successful return to Earth, is shown in Fig. 5. Skylab. The next challenge for KSC was Skylab, a program that would demonstrate that humans can exist in space for long periods and carry out useful scientific and applications tasks. (See the article on Skylab elsewhere in this topic.) The first launch would orbit the Skylab itself, and three succeeding launches would propel crews of three men to the orbiting workshop where they would transfer to Skylab and live and work there for periods increasing from 28 to 59 to 84 days, before returning in their command and service modules. KSC facilities were modified for checkout of the workshop which replaced the Saturn third stage in the stack. The flights to the workshop did not require the power of the Saturn V; a Saturn 1B would suffice. At one time, it was planned to make these launches at Complex 37 on the Cape which had already supported the Apollo 7 manned launch in 1967. However, an ingenious plan to launch these missions (and the subsequent Apollo-Soyuz Test Program (ASTP) mission) from Complex 39 was devised and allowed deactivating Complex 37 years earlier than once planned at a considerable saving in money and manpower.

Figure 5. The launch of Apollo 11, the first lunar landing mission, on 16 July 1969.
The solution was the construction of a steel pedestal, humorously called the ”milk stool,” 127 feet in height atop which the much shorter Saturn 1B would be placed on a mobile launcher allowing some of the Saturn V and Apollo access arms to be used. The mission concept called for the launch of Saturn V with the workshop on one day and the launch of the Saturn 1B with the first Skylab mission crew on the next. This of course required that launch crews at KSC would have to prepare two launch vehicles at the same time and operate two complexes simultaneously. Plans were made to do this, and KSC was ready to launch the crew on 15 May 1973, the day after the workshop was launched. The experience in rendezvous and docking first demonstrated in Gemini and used extensively in Apollo also came into play here, as did the requirement for relatively short launch windows to accomplish rendezvous and docking. However, serious problems arose with the workshop during ascent, and it was necessary to delay the Saturn 1B launch while personnel at MSFC and JSC worked on ways to salvage the mission. These were quickly accomplished, and the Saturn 1B with the first crew of three in their CSM was launched on 25 May 1973 on a 28-day mission.
Figure 6 shows the Skylab 2 stack atop the milk stool and mobile launcher on Pad 39B. The Mobile Service Structure, propelled by the crawler, is approaching the Saturn 1B vehicle. Skylab 3 was launched on 28 July on a 59-day flight. The program concluded with the third mission, launched on 16 November and splashdown occurred on 8 February 1974 after an 84-day flight.

Figure 6. The Skylab vehicle on the ”milk stool” on Pad 39B on 11 January 1971. The work stands on the Mobile Service Structure are clearly seen as it is propelled to the prelaunch position by the crawler.
Apollo-Soyuz Test Program. KSC then turned its attention to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program (ASTP) which was a joint program between the Soviet Union and the United States for rendezvous and docking of a Soyuz, which would be launched first, and an Apollo CSM and joint flight of the two docked spacecraft. This called for using another Saturn 1B and Apollo CSM. Liftoff of the Apollo with three astronauts aboard took place on 15 July 1975. The U.S. portion of the successful mission was terminated by splashdown of the Apollo command module on 24 July 1975 (11).
With the launch of ASTP, KSC entered a period of almost 8 years with no launches at Complex 39. Although there were no launches, it was a period of intense activity preparing the center for the Space Shuttle program. Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle program, which is described in detail elsewhere, featured a reusable Spacecraft called the Orbiter, boosted into space by three rocket engines in the Orbiter and by two large solid rocket boosters which would be jettisoned after burnout, recovered, and reused. After solid rocket separations, the Orbiter would continue on to orbit using its own engines which consumed liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen from a huge external tank (ET) which would be jettisoned after engine burnout. The Orbiter would then continue to achieve the desired orbit by using its own onboard thrusters. After the mission was completed, the Orbiter would use thrusters to decelerate from orbital velocity and land like an airplane, although without any engines running.
The mobile launch concept was carried over to the Space Shuttle, so the mobile launcher crawlers, crawlerway VAB, LCC, and the two pads were destined to be used with the new program, even though some required considerable modification. Because the orbiters were to be reusable, a 15,000-foot landing strip, eventually called the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), was required. The Orbiters had to undergo considerable refurbishment after return to KSC, so a two-bay building called the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) was needed for the refurbishment and for necessary modifications for the next mission, as well as for the initial preparations of each Orbiter as it came on line. Some payloads for Shuttle missions were installed in the OPF. Figure 7 shows the SLF, the VAB, the LCC, the OPF, and part of the crawlerway.
An interesting change of nomenclature, emphasizing the Orbiter’s reusability, had occurred with the advent of the Shuttle. Vehicles that were used only once, like the Delta, the Atlas Centaur, and the Titans, were now called ”expendable,” as opposed to the reusable Shuttle. Heretofore, all launch vehicles, even those used in the manned programs, were in fact expendable. Whether or not the fact that the terms ”manned” and ”unmanned” were now politically incorrect was involved in the name change is not clear. KSC, however, went to the extent of renaming its Unmanned Launch Operations Directorate the Expendable Launch Vehicles Directorate.
Modifications of the mobile launcher included removing the umbilical tower, reconfiguring the openings in the base to accommodate the different solid and liquid engine configurations, adding two tail service masts to handle connections between the launcher and the orbiter, and adding a hold-down/release mechanism to allow analyzing the liquid engine performance before igniting the solids. A number of modifications were made to the VAB; the most important was the modification of the low bay area to a checkout area for the solid rocket segments and nose cones to prepare them for stacking on the modified mobile launcher in the high bay cells.

Figure 7. The Shuttle Landing Facility at the top of this 1983 photograph taken from the southeast. The VAB is prominent in the center, and the Launch Control Center can be seen nearer the bottom of the picture. The Orbiter Processing Facility is visible to the west of the VAB. The Mate/Demate Device is barely visible at the right of the apron between the SLF and the tow way to the OPF. The VAB displays the American flag and the U.S. Bicentennial symbol as a carryover of the Bicentennial ”Third Century America” exposition held at KSC in 1976. The Bicentennial symbol has since been replaced by the traditional NASA ”meatball” (NASA photo).
The process of stacking started with transporting the mobile launcher into one of the high bay cells with the crawler. The two solid motors were then assembled segment by segment on the launcher. The external tank was then attached to the two solid motors. Last the Orbiter was rolled over to the VAB transfer aisle on its own landing gear, hoisted into position, and attached to the ET. After VAB operations were complete, the crawler returned and transported the entire stack of two SRBs, the ET, and the Orbiter to one of the two pads for final checkout and launch. (See the article on the U.S. Manned Spaceflight: Mercury to the Shuttle elsewhere in this topic.) The fact that the SRBs were the basis of the stack, added to the presence of SRB segments in the VAB at almost all times, precluded the use of the office space in the VAB, as contrasted with the Apollo setup where ordnance was installed just before rollout.
At the pads, the modifications included changes in the flame bucket to match the penetrations of the mobile launcher necessitated by the new motor configuration. A fixed service structure (FSS) mounted on the pad surface replaced the tower on the launchers. Among the features on the FSS are the Crew Access Arm, through which the crews enter and exit the Shuttle— ingress and egress in NASA parlance and the so called ”Beanie Cap” which is positioned above the ET and draws off the vented gases from the cryogenic pro-pellant tanks.
Attached to the FSS is the Rotating Service Structure (RSS) that rotates about a large hinge on the FSS allowing it to interface with the Orbiter when required and to rotate to the retired position as launch approached. The RSS provides some protection from the elements for the Orbiter and, more importantly, contains a Payload Changeout Room (PCR) that allows access to the pay-load bay and allows installing payloads at the pad rather than in the OPF much earlier in the preparation process. Eventually, most users opted to install pay-loads at the pad, allowing for shorter times in the field for spacecraft crews and less unattended times for the spacecraft.
Modifications were also necessary to facilities away from Complex 39. The O&C building in the industrial area was modified to check out payloads that would be flown repetitively and that would usually be installed in the OPF. These payloads were sometimes called horizontally processed payloads. The most prominent of these was Spacelab, a facility that fits into the Shuttle payload bay and was built in Europe by the European Space Agency (ESA). Although final assembly and checkout of Spacelab before delivery to KSC was accomplished in Bremen in the Federal Republic of Germany, many of the components were manufactured in plants located in other ESA member countries.
An interesting product of the Shuttle era at KSC was the acquisition of a NASA ”navy.” As mentioned earlier, the solid rocket boosters were designed to be recovered, refurbished, and reused. After booster separation, parachutes were deployed, and the burnt out rockets descended to the ocean surface, where they would be located and towed back to a new dock behind Hangar AF on the Cape by two specially designed ships, the Liberty and Freedom leased by NASA. They were taken into the hangar, disassembled, and put into condition for rail shipment back to the factory for refurbishment for a subsequent flight.
Shuttle Operations at KSC. The first Orbiter named ”Columbia” arrived at the KSC SLF on 24 March 1979. It had ridden piggyback from its California manufacturing plant atop a specially modified 747 aircraft called the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA). The two vehicles were then towed to another new KSC facility called the Mate/Demate Device (MDD) which was capable of lifting the Orbiter from the attach fittings on the 747 and, after the 747 had been moved away, of lowering it to the surface on its own landing gear. (The MDD can also reverse the process of lifting an Orbiter from the surface to the back of a 747, which has been done when Orbiters have been returned to the factory for major modifications and upgrades.) Columbia was then towed to the OPF to begin launch preparations. The other three original Orbiters were ”Challenger,” ”Discovery,” and ”Atlantis,” all named for ships famous for exploration. An earlier model with no engines was named ”Enterprise” and was used for approach and landing tests at Edwards, for vibration tests at MSFC, and as a pathfinder for the new facilities at KSC. After the Challenger was destroyed, an additional Orbiter called ”Endeavour” joined the fleet.
Columbia arrived at KSC with considerably more factory style work yet to be accomplished, mostly in the installation of the thermal protection tiles on areas of the Orbiter that would be susceptible to extreme heating during reentry The original estimate was that about 25% of the approximately 31,000 tiles still needed installation. New tests that raised concern about the capability of many already installed tiles resulted in the removal of thousands of these tiles. This situation severely increased the amount of work to be done at KSC and resulted in substantial delays. Indeed, a second bay of the OPF was turned into a virtual production facility for tiles.
Meanwhile, other components were arriving at KSC. A pathfinder ET had arrived by barge in March. The flight ET arrived on 6 July 1979, and the first of the three Orbiter engines arrived on 10 July. The first solid rocket motor segments arrived in September.
The Orbiter finally was towed from the OPF to the transfer aisle of the VAB on 24 November 1980 after some twenty months in the OPF. In the VAB, it was mated to the ET and the SRBs already on the launch platform. On 29 December 1980, the crawler picked up the stack, and by evening the first Space Shuttle was on its launch pad, ready for preflight operations of the first shuttle mission, called STS-1 (for Space Transportation System). Unlike all other U.S. manned spaceflight programs, whose early launches were accomplished without a human crew, the first launch of Columbia was to be piloted by two astronauts. John Young, veteran of two Gemini flights and two Apollo flights, was the commander, and Robert Crippen, who had no previous space experience, was the pilot. On 12 April 1981, after a 20-second flight readiness firing on 20 February and an aborted countdown on 10 April, the first Space Shuttle lifted off on a mission of 2 days and 6 hours, terminated by a successful landing on a dry lake bed runway at Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
A 300-man crew from KSC was stationed at Edwards to service the Orbiter and prepare it for return to KSC aboard the SCA two weeks later. An MDD like that at KSC had been constructed at Edwards for use in the Approach and Landing Test of the Enterprise and to facilitate delivery of the Orbiters from their relatively nearby production facilities in Palmdale (12).
On its first flight Columbia carried no payload per se. It did, however, carry extensive instrumentation called Development Flight Instrumentation (DFI) to measure the Orbiter’s environment and performance. The second, third, and fourth flights of Columbia were primarily additional flight tests, but each of the STS-2 and STS-3 missions included a payload for NASA, and the STS-4 mission included a payload for the Air Force.
STS-5, using Columbia, was the first operational mission. It successfully carried into low Earth orbit two commercial communications satellites each with two solid motors, one for achieving a geosynchronous transfer orbit after being separated from the orbiter bay and a smaller one for circularizing the orbit to geostationary. The launch of STS-5 took place on 11 November 1982.
STS-6, the first flight of the second Orbiter, Challenger, carried a larger communications satellite and a different solid motor. It, too, was successful.
On the tenth STS flight, Challenger concluded another commercial spacecraft delivery mission, and the first Orbiter landed at the SLF on 11 February through deorbit, reentry, and landing in the crew compartment. The unmanned version consisted of a number of pallets containing experiments, which also stayed in the bay during flight, but which did not require hands-on attention. Any operation of the instruments could be accomplished from the aft flight deck of the Orbiter.
Most spacecraft that were intended to be deployed from the Orbiter are processed in some of the same facilities on KSC and on the Cape that had been used for the unmanned programs. One of these facilities, Building AO on Cape Canaveral, contains a large clean room that was used extensively to prepare planetary spacecraft. Most of these payloads were assembled into a cargo in the Vertical Processing Facility, a building that was originally constructed in 1964 as the Pyrotechnic Installation Building for Apollo spacecraft components. It had been previously used with the name Spacecraft Assembly and Encapsulation Facility 1 (SAEF-1) for planetary spacecraft and even housed the sterilization facility mandated to keep the Viking landers from contaminating Mars.
Payloads have historically been processed using two general philosophies. One is the host mode whereby the resident agency, usually the project providing the launch vehicle, provides facilities, services, and coordination functions with the Range and itself to a payload team that will be at the launch site for a relatively short time, sometimes called a launch campaign. The visiting project team will check out the payload for itself, depending on a coordinator and a team from the launch vehicle project, called the Launch Site Support Manager (LSSM) and the Launch Site Support Team (LSST), to see that its needs are fulfilled and, equally important, that it does not run afoul of Range and vehicle project rules and regulations, particularly in the area of safety. This host mode has been used by NASA’s Unmanned Launch Operations Directorate (later renamed Expendable Vehicles Directorate) in the conduct of the Delta, Atlas Agena, Atlas Centaur, and Titan Centaur programs. It is appropriate for launch vehicle projects that launch a variety of spacecraft.
An alternate mode is more appropriate for a payload project that has a number of similar spacecraft. In this case, launch site personnel are delegated the task of performing the actual checkout, of course, subject to the requirements of the payload project. This method has been used on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.
The Space Shuttle program has used both methods. Repetitive payload programs such as Spacelab were handled by resident NASA personnel. Generally deployable satellites that include a number of significantly different configurations are treated in the host mode. LSSMs were generally assigned in either case.
Payload processing was certainly not a new thing at either the Cape or at KSC, but the advent of the STS, its reusable delivery method, and the concept of reusable payloads brought about a new look to the process (13,14). The International Space Station and KSC. The construction of the International Space Station (ISS) placed new requirements on KSC and resulted in the erection of a new facility at KSC, the Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF). The building contains processing bays, an airlock, control rooms, laboratories, logistics areas, office space, and a cafeteria. After the construction of the SSPF had begun, a decision was made to perform leak checks on pressurized modules of the International Space Station at KSC. One of the altitude chambers in the O&C building which had been used in the Apollo, Skylab, and ASTP programs was refurbished and turned over to ISS operators in 1999 (15). These altitude chambers were deactivated after the ASTP mission in 1975, but they remained in the building unused because there was no requirement for them for Space Shuttle payloads and because removing them would have been very expensive and disruptive.
The new SSPF has been used for the prelaunch checkout of segments of the ISS and will continue to support the program with checkout of other segments of the ISS, experiments, and resupply items that will be transported on the Shuttle throughout the life of the ISS.

Accommodating the Public

NASA has been aware of the requirement in its charter to keep the public informed of its activities. From its beginning, it has given the press information about and access to launches and other major events. In addition, KSC and other centers operate Visitors Centers, where the public is allowed to view exhibits and actual space hardware. These are normally located outside the gates in areas for which no credentials or passes are required. One of the features at the KSC Visitor Center is the Rocket Garden, which includes full size replicas (in some cases actual surplus flight hardware) of space launch vehicles of the past. A full size replica of a shuttle orbiter can be toured, and full scale exhibits of the external tank and the solid rocket boosters can be viewed. Also at KSC, there is the additional feature of bus tours throughout the center that allow the public, for a fee, to ride through the center and to some NASA sites on Cape Canaveral with the option of stopping at certain sites, such as the SSPF observation gallery, an observation tower from which one can see the entire Complex 39, and a Saturn V Apollo building devoted to Apollo, Skylab and ASTP. Within this building is actual Saturn V and Apollo hardware displayed horizontally with the stages and spacecraft elements separated. The KSC Visitor Center, which is operated by a concessionaire, consistently ranks among the top tourist attractions in Florida.
The Air Force, which faces a different set of security concerns, has also accommodated the public with its Air Force Space and Missile Museum. The museum is located within the boundaries of the Cape at deactivated Complex 26, the complex from which America’s first Earth satellite was launched. The blockhouse is used for a display area, and many missiles and space vehicles are erected on the grounds in a Rocket Garden similar to its namesake at the KSC Visitor Center. It includes early ballistic and aerodynamic missiles in addition to some space launch vehicles. Admission is free, but operational and safety concerns limit visiting hours. Adjacent to the Air Force Museum is the deactivated Complex 5/6, the site of the Mercury Redstone launches. A Mercury Redstone and a Jupiter C are displayed in their gantries and can be viewed on drive-through tours of this facility.