NASA: Up close and personal Part II; Cape Canaveral AFS

To complement the last lot, and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Al Shepard's flight next Thursday, some historical stuff:

Cocoa Beach:

The sign at the LaQuinta Motel; formerly known as Cape Colony:



The old Glass Bank Building; the top floor here used to be "Ramon's Rainbow Room", a popular nightclub haunt of the Mercury 7 astronauts.



LC-26: often considerd the birthplace of the US Space Program, and site of the first successful US satellite launch.

The Blockhouse



The control room






The guidance computer: by the time of the Apollo program, this had been reduced the the size of a loaf of bread.....



Sitting atop LC-26A, from where Explorer 1 was launched, a Juno mockup. The red object bottom left is the old three-storey Gemini white room from LC-19, used by all the Gemini crews to enter the capsule, and for spacecraft checkout and launch prep.

Moving forward in time a little: Mercury era.

The Blockhouse at LC5/6; the console with the red arrow was the very one used to launch Alan Shepard and Freedom 7.





A Mercury-Redstone mockup, atop LC-5. Astounding how close the the ground these were, in comparison to today's launches.



Made from an unused Mercury-Atlas, The Mercury 7 memorial, at LC-14, site of the orbital Mercury flights.



And a tad more recently still, the last remaining flight-ready Saturn 1B, planned as the backup launcher for Skylab and rescue craft for ASTP. It sits behind an Apollo command module trainer and the old LC-39A access arm and white room, used by every American to walk on the moon to access the spacecraft atop the launch pad.

Dude, like we said last time, you cant post these awesome pics without some backstory, but post more!

No real backstory here, above and beyond the last set; these were from the public "Cape Canaveral: Now and Then" tour @ the Kennedy Space Center.

I was staying at Cocoa Beach for the two days of the trip and had done my research into the historical stuff around the area. If it's of interest, most of it is detailed here.

I may add a couple more to part I of the set over the next few days, but there'll be one more specific shot which may get it's own post. I'm just working on it in PP as it's one I've had in mind for some time......

Glad you like the ones so far.

By request, a few more from the day at NASA....

LC-34; site of the Apollo 1 fire and Apollo 7 launch.





"Abandon in Place"



Flame deflectors:



Lunar Lander trainer, Apollo-Saturn Center:



And, to mark Alan Shepard's flight 50 years ago today, the original Mercury Mission Control Room. Sadly, the original building has now been torn down at Cape Canaveral, as it was deemed unsafe. However, the original equipment was saved and restored. This was used for all Mercury flights and early unmanned Gemini launches, before control was transferred to the MOCR (Mission Operations Control Room) at Houston.



As an aside, if you want to know who sat where, try the link here.

And one last one, Alan Shepard's original flight suit from Apollo 14.

LC 34 pic no. 2 is awesome...

I love all this space stuff

sbi5ar said:

LC 34 pic no. 2 is awesome...

I love all this space stuff

Click to expand...

Ten you might also like the thread here....

I did ponder using the image you refer to, but canvassed opinion and the chosen shot won out. Might possibly post the other one for comparison, and to gauge opinion. Thoughts welcome.

EDIT: 2nd shot now appended to the thread linked above. Would welcome comments and preferences......