Friday, July 24, 2009

July 24th U,S.'s second choice for first spaceport


Today is a bit momentous. It's the date that the U.S. gets it's first spaceport. Well I should be fair
the date is right, except that the year was 1950. And the place? If you said Cape Canaveral, well you're almost right. You see, Canaveral was the SECOND choice even though it was in fact the FIRST launch facility.

According to the Wired article:
  • ...the original site in California was rejected after the Mexican government refused to let rockets traverse the air space over Baja California. (A near miss in Juarez, Mexico, where a wayward rocket from White Sands, New Mexico, crashed into a cemetery, probably influenced that decision.)
And the first off the pad? Well the old timers know it was a modified German V-2.

Lots of good space history here in an article on Wired

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