Day 6 (20 May). Kennedy Space Center

From: Palatka, FL

To: West Palm Beach, FL

Miles today: 327

Total miles: 1588

Me and the amazing F-1 engines of the Saturn V

Northern Florida is a lot like southern Georgia; flat, marshy, and lots of young forests.  It is clear that logging is an important industry in these parts.  I rode south on FL 19 through the Ocala National Forest, doing my best to weave my way between the sprawling cities of Jacksonville, Gainesville, Daytona, and the enormous Orlando. 

Common sights in southern Georgia and Northern Florida. Trees grow fast here.

Northern Florida changes into central Florida in a couple of ways.  First, while there are still trees, there are no longer forests.  The logging trucks disappear from the roads.  Second, while there are still plenty of marshy areas, lakes become much more common.  I cut east on FL 46 to Titusville, and from there, Merritt Island and the Kennedy Space Center.

I had never been to KSC, yet it had always been a Mecca for me. As a child in the 1960’s, the space program and the Beatles were bright spots during the era of the Viet Nam War, racial equality struggles, and the “generation gap.”  I read a lot of science fiction at this age, and to me and many others I think we saw the manned space program, and the Apollo program in particular, as the future coming into existence before our eyes.  The classic 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” showed commercial flights to a space station so large that it rotated to produce artificial gravity, and had hotels in it.  There were shuttles back and forth to the moon, where there were several manned facilities.  It wasn’t hokey like the TV show “Lost In Space”; rather, the tone was “what will happen when all of this comes to pass in the near future?”  It all seemed so believable when combined with the actual Apollo program.  A science fiction writer of the time named Frederic Pohl wrote a memoir later entitled “The Way the Future Was.”  That phrase sums up my feelings about the Apollo program. 

I now know, of course, that the Space Race between the US and the USSR was a proxy war for the hearts and minds of the world in the post –WWII era, which had been fought with new high tech weapons systems: the atomic bomb, of course, but also radar, jet engines, and rockets.  Being able to put an A-bomb on a rocket and delivering it accurately was a pretty powerful combination, and this as much as anything resulted in the Congressional sponsorship for the program.  Putting a man on the moon would demonstrate national capability in a way that orbiting satellites (especially classified ones) could not. 

Nonetheless, it was an incredible accomplishment; so many of the necessary technologies did not exist and had to be invented and developed in real time.  I gently put the Apollo program forward as a counter example to those who claim that the US government is incapable of doing anything competently. 

The KSC Visitor Complex itself is essentially Disneyland.  I do not mean that pejoratively; people like Disneyland, and the alternative is a presentation of specific impulses, thrust to weight ratios, navigation algorithms, computer designs from the 1960’s, and the like.  Honestly, only a handful of historians of science are interested in that, and they can view all of it elsewhere.  Still, it was kind of weird to walk past the “G-Force Grill” on my way to the “Orbit Café” and the “Space Shop.” I had fun. 

Part of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Disneyland!

 Having spent more hours at KSC than I intended, I decided to take the dreaded I-95 south for 120 miles or so, to the north end of the gigantic Miami Megalopolis.  Cruising at 75 mph in the right hand lane is certainly productive, but you don’t get to see very much.  I didn’t see any other motorcycles.