Writing
Notes, essays, and research from Old Cape Canaveral.
- Apollo
Apollo 1 and Launch Complex 34: January 27, 1967
Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a fire inside their Apollo command module on Pad 34 at the cape during a launch rehearsal on January 27, 1967. The fire began at 6:31 p.m. and the hatch took about five minutes to open.
- Modern era
SpaceX at the cape, 2010 to 2020
SpaceX's Falcon 9 first flew from Cape Canaveral on June 4, 2010. In December 2015 a first stage landed back at the cape, the Falcon Heavy followed in 2018, and on May 30, 2020, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley became the first astronauts launched from Florida since the Shuttle.
- Shuttle
The Shuttle era, 1981 to 2011
The Space Shuttle flew 135 missions between April 12, 1981, and July 21, 2011, all launched from Launch Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center, next door to the cape. Two orbiters and fourteen astronauts were lost, on Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003.
- Port
Port Canaveral, 1953 to today
The Navy proposed a harbor at the cape in 1878, the state created the Canaveral Port Authority in 1939, and the port was dedicated on November 4, 1953. Fishing came first, then cargo, the space program and, from 1982, homeported cruise ships.
- Military
The Eastern Test Range: the cape's stations downrange
The range that starts at Cape Canaveral reached Grand Bahama by 1954, Ascension Island for the first 5,000-mile flight in 1957, and the Indian Ocean by 1963. Most of the island stations closed between 1961 and 1988; Antigua went in 2015.
- Apollo
Apollo at the cape and Apollo at Kennedy Space Center
Apollo's Saturn I and IB rockets flew from Launch Complexes 34 and 37 on Cape Canaveral, including the first crewed Apollo flight, Apollo 7, in October 1968. The Saturn V moon rockets flew from Complex 39 on Merritt Island, chosen in August 1961.
- Gemini
Project Gemini at the cape, 1965 to 1966
All ten crewed Gemini flights launched from Launch Complex 19 at the cape in 1965 and 1966, from Grissom and Young on March 23, 1965, to Lovell and Aldrin on November 11, 1966. Their Agena targets went up from Complex 14.
- Local history
Cape Kennedy and back, 1963 to 1973
A week after President Kennedy's death, Lyndon Johnson renamed the cape Cape Kennedy and its NASA and Air Force launch facilities the John F. Kennedy Space Center. Floridians spent ten years getting the old name back; the space center kept Kennedy's.
- Mercury
Mercury at the cape: Friendship 7, Aurora 7, Sigma 7
Every orbital Mercury flight left from Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral: John Glenn on February 20, 1962, Scott Carpenter on May 24, Wally Schirra on October 3, and Gordon Cooper in May 1963. The suborbital flights went from Complex 5/6.
- Cold War
Bumper 8: July 24, 1950, the cape's first launch
The first rocket launched from Cape Canaveral was Bumper 8, a German V-2 carrying a small American WAC Corporal, on July 24, 1950. The V-2 flew too low and the upper stage never lit. Bumper 7 did better five days later.
- Cold War
The Joint Long Range Proving Ground, 1949
Why the missile range came to Cape Canaveral: a sea range with islands for tracking stations, a Mexican refusal that ruled out California, a British yes in the Bahamas, and a closed Navy base next door. Truman signed the law on May 11, 1949.
- Military
The Banana River Naval Air Station, 1940 to 1948
The Navy commissioned a seaplane base on the Banana River on October 1, 1940. It flew anti-submarine patrols in World War II, peaked at 278 aircraft and more than 2,800 officers and men, closed in 1947 and became the base for the missile range.
- Pre-Columbian
The Ais and the cape: the northern edge of Ais country
When the Spanish came, the Indian River belonged to the Ais, whose country was said to reach almost to Cape Canaveral. What survives of them is a handful of Spanish records from 1570 to 1703 and one English castaway's journal from 1696.
- Lighthouse
The Cape Canaveral Lighthouse, 1848 to today
A 65-foot brick lighthouse went up at the cape in 1848. The 151-foot iron tower that replaced it in 1868 was taken apart and moved inland in 1893 and 1894, and it still stands on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.