Museums in Brevard County, Florida - Kennedy Space Center (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Kennedy Space Center - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Kennedy Space Center was created and has evolved to meet the changing needs of America's manned space program, initially in competition with the Soviet Union. What is today KSC was authorized in 1958 during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The facility was originally known as the Launch Operations Directorate (LOD), reporting to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. President John F. Kennedy's 1961 goal of a lunar landing within nine years led to an expansion of NASA operations from a few buildings in the Industrial Area of Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex (later Air Force Station), notably Hangar S, to Merritt Island. NASA began land acquisition in 1962, buying title to 131 square miles (340 km) and negotiating with the state of Florida for an additional 87 square miles (230 km). The major buildings in the Industrial Area were designed by architect Charles Luckman. On July 1, 1962, the site was renamed the Launch Operations Center, achieving equal status with other NASA centers; and on November 29, 1963, the facility received its current name by Executive Order following Kennedy's death. A Saturn V carrying Apollo 15 rolls out to Pad 39A in 1971 on Mobile Launch Platform 1. The U.S. lunar landing was accomplished in three stagesMercury, Gemini and Apollo. The objectives of the Mercury program were to place a manned spacecraft in earth orbit, investigate human performance and the ability to function in space, and safely recover the astronaut and spacecraft. Although Mercury was directed by NASA, launches were from the U.S. Air Force's Cape Canaveral Annex. The first two manned tests used the Redstone booster from Li5 for the 1961 suborbital flights of Alan Sh... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=16421