Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    NASA Kennedy Space Center
    NASA Kennedy Space Center
    NASA Kennedy Space Center
    Ebook172 pages59 minutes

    NASA Kennedy Space Center

    By Mark A. Chambers and Michael Curie

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    From Bumper V-2 rocket launches in 1950 to the launch of the Orion spacecraft atop a Delta IV rocket in 2014, NASA's Kennedy Space Center has served as the nation's portal to outer space for over 60 years. Images of Modern America: NASA Kennedy Space Center provides a fascinating look at the evolution of spacecraft technology and vintage images of Florida's scenic Merritt Island, known as the "Space Coast." This photographic history of the nation's premier spaceport looks back at the United States' glorious past in space exploration and ahead to its future.

    Editor's Note

    SpaceX takes flight…

    Elon Musk’s dream of private space flight leaped forward with the launch of Falcon Heavy, the first private rocket to be sent to space. Reminisce on previous launches at the historic Kennedy Space Center with these photos.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateFeb 15, 2016
    ISBN9781439655740
    NASA Kennedy Space Center
    Author

    Mark A. Chambers

    Mark A. Chambers works as a technical writer for Huntington Ingalls Industries/Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia. He is the author of six Arcadia Publishing/The History Press titles: Flight Research at NASA Langley Research Center, Naval Air Station Patuxent River, NASA Kennedy Space Center, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Naval Air Station Norfolk and Naval Air Station Oceana Fleet Defenders.

    Read more from Mark A. Chambers

    Related to NASA Kennedy Space Center

    Related ebooks

    United States History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Reshuffling The Deck

      Nov 23, 2021

      Reshuffling The Deck
      4 min read

    • Article

      Aviation History Online

      Sep 28, 2021

      Aviation History Online
      1 min read

    • Article

      Dropping The Orange Beast

      Mar 5, 2019

      Dropping The Orange Beast
      10 min read

    • Article

      To Catch A Shadow

      Nov 23, 2021

      To Catch A Shadow
      7 min read

    • Article

      20 Facts You Didn’ T Know About Apollo 11

      Aug 26, 2019

      1 Neil Armstrong’s ‘one small step for man’ wasn’t small at all. He had to drop just over a metre from the foot of the Eagle’s ladder to the surface. 2 They could have been locked out. When lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the Moon’

      2 min read

    • Article

      Sticking The Landing

      Jul 12, 2022

      Sticking The Landing
      3 min read

    • Article

      F-102 Delta Dagger Units

      Apr 13, 2021

      by Peter E. Davies, Osprey Publishing, 2020, $24. The airplane’s evolution from pistons and props to rockets and turbojets was accompanied by a new variety of shapes, each with its particular strengths, weaknesses and overall fascinations. In 1946 Ge

      1 min read

    • Article

      MiG-17/19 Aces of the Vietnam War

      Oct 1, 2019

      By István Toperczer, Osprey Publishing, 2016 From the time they sent their first contingent to the Soviet Union for training in 1956, the North Vietnamese understood what their newly forming Vietnamese People’s Air Force was likely to face. Their air

      2 min read

    • Article

      Roddenberry’s War

      Jul 2, 2019

      Roddenberry’s War
      11 min read

    • Article

      Thunder In The Cinema

      Jul 2, 2019

      Thunder In The Cinema
      10 min read

    • Article

      The First Sst

      Jan 25, 2022

      The First Sst
      5 min read

    • Article

      Sid Cotton’s Air Force

      Jan 25, 2022

      Sid Cotton’s Air Force
      4 min read

    • Article

      The First 172

      Jul 3, 2018

      The First 172
      4 min read

    • Article

      Pete Knight’s Wild Rides

      Dec 22, 2020

      Pete Knight’s Wild Rides
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Great Stewardess Rebellion

      Jul 12, 2022

      The Great Stewardess Rebellion
      9 min read

    • Article

      Crusader down

      Sep 4, 2018

      Crusader down
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Secret Dogfight

      Oct 11, 2022

      The Secret Dogfight
      11 min read

    • Article

      Reaching For The Stars

      Oct 6, 2023

      Reaching For The Stars
      3 min read

    • Article

      Complete Guide To NASA

      Feb 24, 2022

      Complete Guide To NASA
      7 min read

    • Article

      We Came In Peace

      Jul 10, 2019

      IT WAS A “GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND,” and it was taken at 12:56pm on July 21, 1969, Australian Eastern Standard Time. Six hundred million people, one sixth of the global population at the time, watched the Apollo 11 moonwalk live on television. What mos

      8 min read

    • Article

      Space Travel

      Sep 1, 2021

      Space Travel
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Last Moon Landing

      Dec 1, 2022

      The Last Moon Landing
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Moon Will Have to Wait

      Sep 6, 2022

      The Moon Will Have to Wait
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for NASA Kennedy Space Center

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      NASA Kennedy Space Center - Mark A. Chambers

      project.

      INTRODUCTION

      For over half a century, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Kennedy Space Center (KSC), located on Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, with several facilities on Cape Canaveral, Florida, has served as America’s primary portal to the heavens. KSC has served as the launch site for nearly all of America’s unprecedented and historic space projects and programs, including the nation’s first manned space missions that served as technological stepping stones to the ultimate goal: the technological triumph of successfully landing a man on the Moon. KSC has also served as the launch site for pioneering unmanned space programs, such as the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 deep space exploration programs, that are enabling us to explore and better understand our universe. Other historic unmanned interplanetary exploration programs have also been launched from KSC, including the Viking program of the latter 1970s, which enabled us to study the planet Mars for the first time, and the Cassini-Huygens program of the 2000s, which is still providing us with data and images of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, and their numerous moons. Following the termination of the Apollo program, KSC launched elements of space stations—Skylab during the mid-1970s and the International Space Station (ISS) during the latter 1990s and into the middle of the first decade of the 2000s—and a new space vehicle that could fly in space like an airplane, the Space Transportation System (STS), a space shuttle Orbiter mounted atop a huge external fuel tank that had a solid rocket booster (SRB) attached on both sides. Much like the earlier American manned space programs, the space station and shuttle programs proved to be highly successful.

      The origins of America’s manned space program and NASA KSC existed in World War II Germany. Wernher von Braun, a brilliant civilian rocket scientist who dreamed of building rockets to transport humans to the Moon during the 1930s, was recruited by the Nazi leadership to work on Adolf Hitler’s extremely advanced vengeance weapon, the A-4 or Vengeance (V)-2 rocket. The V-2 rocket was the world’s first ballistic missile and was capable of delivering a warhead to civilian targets in England and throughout Allied Europe. The V-2 rockets were employed in concert with Vengeance (V)-1 buzz bombs, the world’s first cruise missiles. Von Braun and his team of scientists worked with German military officials to develop these wonder weapons at an experimental test site that became known as Peenemünde, situated on northern Germany’s Baltic coast.

      From mid-1944 until the end of the war in Europe, the V-1s and V-2s wreaked terror, havoc, and destruction on Allied Europe’s civilian populace, striking in most cases with deadly precision. In 1943, Royal Air Force (RAF) high-altitude photo-reconnaissance flights yielded photographic evidence of Germany’s advanced technological exploits at Peenemünde. Shortly thereafter, Peenemünde was night bombed by RAF Bomber Command bombers, forcing the Germans to move V-1 and V-2 assembly and launch operations underground. As a result, the Mittelwerk V-weapon assembly facilities were constructed under Kohnstein Mountain in the Harz Mountain Range in northwestern Germany. V-2 components, specifically, were to be transferred to an elaborate series of launch prep/launch facilities, protected by an immense, thick concrete dome, at La Coupole in Nazi-occupied northern France. Several of the facilities built or envisioned for La Coupole would later, in many respects, serve as blueprints for facilities eventually erected at NASA KSC, including the Space Center’s gargantuan Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), which, volume-wise, is one of the world’s largest buildings. In the end, however, Germany’s wonder weapons proved to be too little, too late, and Germany lost the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1