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:
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)