The Space Coast

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you may be swept off to."
Bilbo Baggins

The Space Coast

posted 03/04/03
100,000 years ago, a young man living in an African Valley began a voyage of discovery. He had the Risk Taking Gene and was always the first to defy the elders of his tribe. He drove his Mom crazy with worry and he embarrassed his father. He had married a young woman much like himself. While other girls played the domestic games, she wanted to hunt.

One day, as the young man looked around the rapidly filling valley, he turned to his partner and said the local equivalent of "Pack your bags. We're leaving this one dingo town."

She grinned back at him and said,"I've been ready all my life. What took you so long?"

They walked north to the Middle East and then some of their offspring veered east into Asia and some down into Australia. Others went west into Europe and almost 100,000 years later some humans with that same RTG sailed west to the Americas and met their ancestors who had come over the Bering land bridge thousands of years before. On Florida's Atlantic coast I met others from this risky tribe.

I went to the Kennedy Space Center to view my passion, which has always been space exploration. I didn't know what the mood would be so soon after the loss of Columbia. I didn't know if all sections at the Center would still be open. I needn't have worried. The mood was somber but not defeatist, serious but not depressed. The folks that worked at the Center seemed to have an attitude that honored the crew but still carried on with the mission of exploration. They know that the journey is dangerous. That some come back but that some do not.

You enter the Center from the south through a wildlife refuge. Armadillos and gators share the roadside. Bald eagles nest in the trees. There are roads that traverse the area but no roadside advertising so the scenery is visible and worth a visit in it's own right.

At the main gate, rockets loom over the ticket sales. This is the Rocket Garden where you can see all of the early manned rockets except the huge Saturn V moon rocket. It's so large that it has a display building all of its own. My wife and I bought the tour pack for the historic part of the cape to see the launch pads where the first manned rockets took off.

This is in a working section so while you look at historical areas, 400 yards away, a Delta rocket is being loaded for a March launch. In another area Boeing is reading for a launch in April.

Here is the pad that Alan Shepard took that first suborbital flight in May of 1961. Engineers are less risk taking than astronauts and so while Shepard waited for two hours in a small cramped capsule they debated about the safety of his flight. What could go wrong? What if the heat shield failed? Would the rocket blow up on launch? Finally fed up, Shepard called on the intercom and said, "OK, lets light this roman candle!" And they did.

As you walk the haunted pads, the wind blows and the Atlantic surf sighs in the distance. Some would wish a better job and more money be spent preserving these historic launch pads but while the past is here, this place is really about the future and the work continues.

Future Astronauts and risk takers

The rocket garden

Delta rocket being readied for a March launch

Alan Shepard's Freedom 7

Site of the Apollo 1 fire

The base of the huge Saturn V moon rocket

At some time in that distant future I have every confidence that this will be sacred ground. Parents will bring their reluctant children from the far-flung outposts of humanity and point and say, "See, This is where it started. This is where we got our start to the moon…mars…alpha centauri!" in a few thousand years the United States will not be remembered for the wars we fought, the presidents we elected, but we will be known for this spot because this is where we took an important first step.

We all have some of that first family out of Africa's risk taking gene. I ride fast motorcycles. Others skydive. A fortunate few ride pillars of flame into the night sky to represent us all.

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