The Launch Crowd

There was no Disney World then. Just rows and rows of orange trees. Millions of them, stretching for miles. And on the coast, a sandy spur of land called Cape Canaveral was America’s beachhead in the Cold War. It didn’t seem like war. Convertible Corvettes and a new car called the Mustang raced along undeveloped beachfront. The Beach Boys played from tin-sounding transistor radios next to the Cocoa Beach Pier. And while those in the space program knew of the incredible risks, America laughed at a goofy astronaut on TV and his Jeannie in a bottle.

In 1965, I was 4 and living about 120 miles south of the Cape in West Palm Beach. My grandmother would take me by the hand out on the front lawn to watch the Gemini launches. I saw hours of network coverage sitting in a cardboard box that was my space capsule. I drank Tang.

Four years later, we took a guided tour of the Cape. It was the summer of ‘69, the moonshot summer of Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins, and the place seemed like it had more people than would gather the next month on a New York farm near the town of Woodstock.

In late 1972, just before my 12th birthday, I snuck out of the house after midnight and stood on the driveway. The tail flame from Apollo 17 cleared the roof of the Davenport’s ranch house across the street and lighted up a trail to the moon.

It would be the last time the U.S. took aim at the moon--until now. Twenty-five years later, this Jan. 7, NASA launched from the Cape a spacecraft to look for water on the moon that could one day be used by human settlers. The Lunar Prospector has since slipped into a 60-mile-high orbit and has begun searching for evidence of frozen water as well as minerals and gases.

The national apathy toward the space program that set in in the ‘70s seems to have turned around as well. Maybe it was the surprise hit movie “Apollo 13” in 1995, or Shannon Lucid’s 188-day record shuttle flight in 1996, or the possible discovery of life on Mars via a meteorite that fell to earth.

Whatever the reason, a daytime shuttle launch can pull up to a quarter-million people and put local merchants on Super-Bowl-level alert. The NASA museums are packed, the five-story IMAX space theaters are full, the beaches rollicking and the shoulder of U.S. 1 bumper-to-bumper with RVs.

There are a number of RV campgrounds in the area, but many early birds simply stake out a viewing site alongside the highway and make it their campground for two or three days. And many travelers plan visits to Disney World to coincide with shuttle launches, the Cape being an hour’s drive from Orlando and Disney World.

This year there are seven more chances to see the space program in action: the next one, the launch of the shuttle Endeavour Jan. 22. NASA starts taking requests months in advance for the coveted first-come-first-served vehicle passes to get on Space Center property, about five miles closer to the pad than public sites. But the view across the Indian River from the side of U.S. 1 in Titusville isn’t shabby either. And there’s always the excellent vantage from the hotel rooftops and The Pier in Cocoa Beach. In short, there are no bad seats.

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We had written for passes three months in advance of the Discovery launch of Feb. 3, 1995, the one that got us hooked on launch vacations. Our family packed up the day before and headed over to the Cape. It was a predawn launch (about 3 a.m.) so we checked in the day before at the Oceanside Inn, next to the Cocoa Beach Pier.

The wake-up call came at midnight, but the excitement made up for lack of sleep. As we drove to the exit of the hotel’s parking lot, we hadn’t expected what we found.

In what should have been the dead of night, thousands of motorists were heading up the coastal A1A Highway, stringing a necklace of headlights along the shore like the closing scene from “Field of Dreams.”

We merged and followed the map onto Merritt Island and to the guard shack at the entrance to the John F. Kennedy Space Center. We didn’t know it yet, but we were heading into one of the nation’s biggest tailgate parties.

The viewing site is on a causeway across the Banana River that creates an exquisite vista over water to the pad. Six miles away, across the marshy nesting grounds of herons and egrets, the shuttle was lighted in a cross-fire of blazing spotlights.

The license plates were from all over, and the sedans, vans, sports cars and station wagons jammed together on the shoulder of the roadway. Kids ran around in pajamas, with sleeping bags set up along the river; parents unloaded lawn chairs from trunks and broke out the orange juice.

A souvenir kiosk was doing brisk business in shuttle pennants, mugs, hats, key fobs, shot glasses and freeze-dried “astronaut” ice cream. The refreshment kiosk was serving up hot chocolate and coffee. The communications between Launch Control and the shuttle cockpit were broadcast from loudspeakers attached to poles along the causeway and echoed by hundreds of car radios tuned in to local launch coverage. The crowd responded to the drama by unpacking coolers and eating like crazy.

It had the feel of a college football game, except everyone was pulling for the same team. There were brief waves of celebration and relief at each countdown milestone. One hour, 30 minutes, 10 minutes . . .

The loudspeakers broadcast that the weather was acceptable, and, as the count went under a minute, a NASA voice told the astronauts to “have a nice ride.”

Following the loudspeakers’ cue, the audience shouted in unison: “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 . . . “

In the distance there were odd, quiet pops and clicks. Then a flicker of light and a lot of smoke that obscured everything. And this tiny spaceship started poking its way out of the cloud and rocketing upward on a flame as bright as dawn.

What we had just seen was plenty; I was already a kid again. But then I overheard a veteran launch viewer say, “Get ready, here it comes.”

The shuttle was already a good way up in the sky, but then a deep, tunneling sound started to build, like that giant worm from “Dune” and coming straight at us--the shock wave hit.

The shuttle had become almost too bright to look at, but we forced ourselves anyway, and the sound was pounding up from the ground like everyone was standing on a huge stereo speaker. Thousands of wading birds were flushed from the marshes and filled the sky like a swarm of locusts.

The shuttle arced over toward its orbital flight path, jettisoned barely visible solid rocket boosters and finally disappeared as a tiny morning star.

There was lots of applause, whooping and whistling, and one woman yelled out, “OK, I’m ready to pay my taxes this year.”

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Through our family’s launch experiences, a sort of “greatest hits” has emerged, as well as a few huge “don’ts.”

Make sure you go to the official Visitor Complex at Kennedy Space Center. Make sure you don’t go on launch day, when there are crowds in the gift shop.

There are no crazy rides; the thrills are in the mind-bending sights such as the complete Saturn V laid on its side longer than a football field in one exhibit hall.

There’s a set of charred touchstones of the space race: actual Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules. They seemed so futuristic when I was watching them go up in the ‘60s. But now, up close, they look as safe as a bunch of barrels that went over Niagara Falls.

The Visitor Complex is where you buy tickets for the Space Center tour buses that depart every 15 minutes, 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. every day of the week, for two-hour tours. The buses are one of the better bargains at the Cape ($14 for adults; $10, children 3 to 11). They take visitors in one of two directions: the future and the past. The Kennedy Space Center tour visits the Vehicle Assembly Building, the crawler transport and the working launch pads of the shuttles. The Cape Canaveral Air Station tour rolls south toward the “Launch Pad Row” of the Mercury and Gemini programs, passing the old Canaveral lighthouse and the monument to the original seven astronauts.

There’s an extended stop at the Air Force Space and Missile Museum, where you can walk into the blockhouse next to the pad of America’s first satellite launch and peer out through the thick, protective glass.

At the other end of the museum grounds is the launch pad of Alan Shepard’s and Gus Grissom’s Mercury flights, America’s first baby steps in space. I thought there would be all kinds of security and restoration. But the gantry was torn down and sold for scrap. The blockhouse is locked up, surrounded by weeds and looking as venerable as an abandoned gas station.

I asked one of the museum volunteers about it, and he said I could go ahead and hike out to it. Fifteen minutes later I was standing alone--not another soul or sound for hundreds of yards--out on the spot where every TV in America was focused one morning in May 1961. I tried to think of something properly ceremonial to consecrate this moment that connected me with the history of my youth, so I crawled under the replica rocket on the pad, stuck my head up into it and yodeled.

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A self-guided nostalgia tour around the Cape is less official but in its own way equally instructive. The restaurants where the astronauts ate, the beaches where they tanned, the roads where they wiped out in sports cars.

One way to get a taste is to visit a couple of nostalgic holdovers, the Moon Hut restaurant on A1A and the Moon Lite drive-in diner in Titusville, two wonderful neon slices of ‘60s kitsch.

But all the locals will tell you that the place to eat is Bernard’s Surf (established 1948), the site of some famous astronaut meals. Near the entrance are photos of astronauts waving to crowds as parades rolled past the restaurant, and crews eating dinner inside.

Another local favorite, farther north on A1A, is Alma’s Seafood and Italian Restaurant. Most of its memorabilia was destroyed in a fire, but some remains. There’s a faded picture of Apollo 12’s Alan Bean walking on the moon in 1969 that’s inscribed: “I was the first man in history to eat spaghetti on the moon, but believe me it didn’t equal yours.”

There’s Fat Boys Barbecue on A1A, where just about every American who went into space in the 1960s apparently ate, and their autographed photos cover the walls. The Shuttle Bar and Grill, on the road leading south from the Space Center, feels like a NASA frat house, and even nearby Bagel World is filled with hundreds of pieces of space history.

Arguably the best places to stay are the beach hotels such as the Cocoa Beach Hilton, the Oceanside Inn, Comfort Inn, Days Inn Oceanfront and others. They’re centrally located within striking distance of the space center and the restaurants. If you don’t want to fight the traffic and crowds on launch day, just leave your car parked and walk out of your hotel room onto the beach, which is considered one of the prime viewing sites.

The pier behind the hotels isn’t what you might expect from the average fishing boardwalk. It features four restaurants, four tropical bars, various shops and live entertainment--and more space memorabilia. At the end is a little thatched-roof tiki bar. We’ve made it a tradition before night launches to sit out there at sunset. To the north, where the Cape juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, launch gantries are silhouetted in the fading light. And somewhere, astronauts are suiting up.

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GUIDEBOOK

Lift Off for

Cape Canaveral

Getting there: There is nonstop service, from Los Angeles to Orlando, Fla., on United and Delta; round-trip fares start at $378.

Where to stay: Rooms in beach hotels in Cocoa Beach are in the $70-$120 price range: Hilton, 1550 N. Atlantic Ave.; telephone (407) 799-0003 or (800) HILTONS. Oceanside Inn, 1 Hendry Ave.; tel. (407) 784-3126 or (800) 874-7958. Days Inn Oceanfront, 5600 N. Atlantic Ave.; tel. (407) 783-7621 or (800) 962-0028. Comfort Inn, 3901 N. Atlantic Ave.; tel. (407) 783-2221 or (800) 247-2221. Holiday Inn, 1300 N. Atlantic Ave.; tel. (407) 783-2271 or (800) 226-6587. Howard Johnson Plaza-Hotel, 2080 N. Atlantic Ave.; tel. (407) 783-9222 or (800) 552-3224.

Launch schedule: Endeavour, Jan. 22; Columbia, April 2; Discovery, May 28; Endeavour, July 9; Columbia, Aug. 26; Discovery, Oct. 8; Endeavour, Dec. 3.

Launch information: Call NASA at (407) 867-4636 or the Visitor Center at (800) KSC-INFO.

Where to view launches: Public viewing is popular along U.S. Highway 1 in Titusville and Florida Highway A1A in Cocoa Beach and south of State Road 402 before entrance to the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge. For vehicle passes to view the launch from a site six miles from the pad on Kennedy Space Center property, write at least three months in advance to: NASA Visitor Services, Mail Code: AB-F2, Kennedy Space Center, FL 32899. About a week before launch, the Visitor Center begins selling a limited number of tickets ($10) for buses that take visitors to the site; call (407) 452-2121, selection 6, for information.

Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex: Open daily 9 a.m.-7:30 p.m.; admission is free; for information, brochure, call (407) 452-2121.

Air Force Space and Missile Museum: Open Monday through Friday 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; admission is free; for recorded information, call (407) 853-3245.

Dining/night life: The Cocoa Beach Pier, tel. (407) 783-7549; Bernard’s Surf, tel. (407) 783-2401; or Alma’s Seafood and Italian Restaurant, tel. (407) 783-1981.

For more information: Cocoa Beach Chamber of Commerce; tel. (407) 459-2200. Florida Space Coast’s Office of Tourism; tel. (407) 868-1126. NASA’s Web site: https://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/nasa_homepage.html.