Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex - History

History

The complex had its beginning in the 1960s in a small trailer containing simple displays on card tables. By 1964, more than 250,000 self-guided car tours, permitted between 1 and 4 p.m. ET on Sundays at the urging of U.S. Rep. Olin Teague of Texas, were seen at 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. 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 was begun with added focus on the benefits of space exploration along with the existing focus on human space exploration.

In 1995, Delaware North Companies was selected to operate the visitor center. Since then, the facility has been entirely self-supporting and receives no taxpayer or government funding. NASA renewed the contract with Delaware North Companies through May 2020 with options to extend the contract through 2030.

Read more about this topic:  Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.
    Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)

    When the history of this period is written, [William Jennings] Bryan will stand out as one of the most remarkable men of his generation and one of the biggest political men of our country.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.
    Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)