Shuttle Launch Experience
 |
|
| Location | Merritt Island, Florida |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 28°31′24″N 80°40′55″W / 28.5233°N 80.6819°WCoordinates: 28°31′24″N 80°40′55″W / 28.5233°N 80.6819°W |
| Theme | NASA and space exploration |
| Owner | NASA |
| Operated by | Delaware North Companies |
| Opened | August 1, 1967 |
| Previous names | Spaceport USA |
| Operating season | open year-round |
| Visitors per annum | 1.5 million |
| Website | www.kennedyspacecenter.com |
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is the visitor center at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It features exhibits and displays, historic spacecraft and memorabilia, shows, two IMAX theaters, and a range of bus tours of the spaceport. "Space Shuttle Atlantis" is home to the real Space Shuttle Atlantis orbiter and the Shuttle Launch Experience, a simulated ride into space. The visitor complex also has daily presentations from a veteran NASA astronaut. A bus tour, included with admission, encompasses the separate Apollo/Saturn V Center. There were 1.7 million visitors to the visitor complex in 2016.
The complex had its beginning in the 1960s in a small trailer containing simple displays on card tables. As the American space programs' popularity grew with the Mercury Program and Alan Shepard's historic launch, large numbers of press and public flocked to the Cape Canaveral area to get a close up view. NASA Administrator James Webb was urged by U.S. Rep. Olin Teague of Texas to create a visitors program. By 1964, more than 250,000 self-guided car tours, permitted between 1 and 4 pm. ET on Sundays, were seen at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). In 1965, KSC Director Kurt H. Debus was authorized to spend $2 million on a full-scale visitors center. Spaceport USA, as it was soon titled, hosted 500,000 visitors in 1967, its first year, and one million by 1969. As NASA neared the moon, popularity grew. By 1969, the visitor center was the second most visited Florida attraction, behind Tampa's Busch Gardens. Even during the gap between the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs, attendance remained at over one million guests and it ranked as the fifth most popular tourist attraction in Florida.
When nearby Walt Disney World opened in 1971, visitors center attendance increased by 30 percent, but the public was often disappointed by the comparative lack of polish at KSC's tourist facilities. Existing displays were largely made up of trade show exhibits donated by NASA contractors. Later that year, a $2.3 million upgrade of the visitor complex began with added focus on the benefits of space exploration along with the existing focus on human space exploration.
...
Wikipedia