Recapture the Early Days of Manned Space Flight at the Air Force Space and Missile Museum

Posted on November 1, 2008
Filed Under North America

A visit to Cape Canaveral would not be complete without a visit to the place where early manned spaceflight began in America. The Air Force Space and Missile Museum is located on the grounds of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and has a number of interesting and intriguing exhibits preserved from the development of the space program and includes actual re-entry space craft from manned space flights.

Strolling through the museum’s rocket garden, a visitor can marvel at replicas of rockets and missiles that were once launched from this very sight. Preserved on the grounds is Complex 26, the original block house where the launches for the Mercury manned space flights were controlled from. Not far from the rocket garden is an actual replica of a Mercury Redstone Rocket poised atop a launch pad, looking as ready for liftoff as it was on the day when Alan Shepard became the first American in Space. This museum preserves and recaptures all of the elements of early spaceflight from the development of missile engines to full-blown replicas of rockets that were used to hurl satellites and spacecraft into space. The museum is accessible by a special shuttle bus that departs from the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex.