May 29, 2009: Outside a low-rise midcentury government building, Cape Canaveral, Florida. Iowa connection: James Van Allen.
I have been to just about every major installation related to the Space Race that isn’t in California. At both Cape Canaveral and Huntsville, I signed up for the longest, most extensive tours available. At both Cape Canaveral and Huntsville, I could have been nearly everyone else on the tour’s child. I wish I would have had a camcorder to tape the trip and what the guides said. But I have many, many photos of the structures, long past their time, that were used to propel the United States from before NASA began to when Americans landed on the moon. I saw control panels and consoles with lights and buttons and switches that would look at home in Star Trek, because Star Trek got its inspiration for lights and buttons and switches from the real world to create what today is the past’s vision of the future.
Pictures from Cape Canaveral can be seen in my photo album from my 2009 vacation to Florida. (The management is fully aware that the road trip photo galleries page is both neglected in promotion and not updated for a decade. — Ed.)