Family Getaways 2008 - (Page 28) Here, crowds watch the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery, photo by Mark Foley of NASA. Right, Kennedy Space Center, photo by Tony Gray and Don Kight of NASA. Cocoa Beach has cool kitsch. A day here might include a stop at the Surf Museum, shopping at a tiki gallery and a trip down I Dream of Jeannie Lane (yes, it’s a real street). Yes, master. This is a beach town with a sense of humor and a serious case of nostalgia – a lively, beloved throwback that also happens to occupy a crucial spot on America’s timeline. Cocoa Beach and its environs, including Titusville to the south of Cape Canaveral, are encompassed by the Space Coast, a designation that emphasizes the area’s rich ties to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s John F. Kennedy Space Center, where the first astronauts rocketed to space. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex pays tribute to circa-1960s space culture (the Mercury 7 team flew six times between 1961 and 1963), especially in its collection of rare memorabilia at the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. Outside the Kennedy Space Center, the beachy landscape still has the power to evoke the moment when the popular imagination was gripped by the possibilities of space travel. In the early days, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Alan Shepard, John Glenn and the rest of the Mercury 7 crew tooled around what was known as Missileland, U.S.A., where crowds once gathered on the beach to watch launches through binoculars – and still do. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the Air Force’s missile test center was well established on Cape Canaveral and the space program was tuning up, the local population swelled from 23,000 to 70,000. The town’s character also became more expansive: Space-themed motels with names like The Sea Missile, AstroCraft and Satellite popped up alongside trippy diners like The Moon Hut. These mod motels hosted launch parties out by their pools for industry-insiders and boasted extravagant signage. We play homage to the “Mercury 7” era with seven top sights from the time of Mercury and Apollo. 28 VISITFLORIDA.com/family http://VISITFLORIDA.com/family
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