Re: OT: Phoenix has landed!

aspasia wrote:
"Peter Duncanson (BrE)" wrote:

I almost forgot the folks at Cape Canaveral who control the
launch.

Interesting factoid about the Cape: After the JFK assassination,
many places were hastily renamed after him, including the Cape.
Then, some years later, it reverted to its old name. Here's why:

==============

Dear Cecil: [Adams]

Can you tell me why they changed the name of the U.S. space center
from Cape Kennedy back to its original name, Cape Canaveral? --S.M.J.,
Atlanta, Georgia


Sure, but let's get our facts straight: they didn't change the name
of the space center, they changed the name of the cape--i.e., the land
under the space center (or under part of it, anyway). The NASA launch
facility continues to be known as the John F. Kennedy Space Center.
The whole confusing business got started back on November 27, 1963,
shortly after JFK's assassination, when Lyndon Johnson was casting
about for a suitable memorial for the slain president. Jackie Kennedy
suggested it might be appropriate to rename Cape Canaveral--after all,
her husband had been a big space-exploration buff, and had launched
the Apollo program that would eventually put a man on the moon.

Now, your average president would have taken "Cape Canaveral" to mean
merely "the Cape Canaveral launch facility," which at the time
consisted of two installations--Station Number 1 of the Atlantic
Missile Range (operated by the Department of Defense) and the NASA
Launch Operation Center. LBJ, however, was never one for halfway
measures. In an exhibition of his legendary arm-twisting skills, he
got the Department of the Interior's Board of Geographic Names to
agree to changing the name of the cape itself in a record three hours,
enabling him to announce the rechristening of both cape and center in
his Thanksgiving Day message.

Nobody objected to renaming the space center, but quite a number of
Floridians were peeved about changing the name of the cape, which had
been called Canaveral for more than 400 years. It had been sighted by
Ponce de Leon in 1513, was named by other Spaniards not long after
that, and appears as Cape Canaveral on the earliest French and Spanish
maps of the area. ("Canaveral" is supposedly Spanish for "place of
tall reeds.") The nearby towns of Cape Canaveral and Cocoa promptly
sent resolutions protesting the change to LBJ and the governor of
Florida, but in the hysterical atmosphere following the assassination
nobody paid much attention. Nonetheless, state historical groups and
others persevered in their efforts to get the old name back, and
eventually a resolution to that effect was introduced in the U.S.
Senate.

Witnesses at a committee hearing on the matter were uniformly in favor
of resurrecting the name, but Congress was reluctant to act,
presumably because it might appear disrespectful to the late
president. Finally, having gotten fed up with waiting for Uncle Sam to
do anything, the Florida legislature passed a resolution stating its
intention to try to get the name changed on maps regardless of what
Congress did. What sort of behind-the-scenes scrambling followed this
declaration is not clear, but on October 9, 1973, the Board of
Geographic Names unanimously agreed to restore the old name. Ted
Kennedy wrote a brief letter saying his family "understand[s] the
decision," and that was that.

=========================

There's even more confusing stuff about my last workplace -- the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (its current name, but not when I was there).

=====================
From http://www.robsv.com/cape/gate1.html

The area that now makes up Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was established in 1949 as the Joint Long Range Proving Ground, a facility dedicated to the testing of rockets and missiles. This later became the Cape Canaveral Auxiliary Air Force Base. It supported most of America's unmanned launches, and all of the manned launches up until part way through the Apollo program, when manned launches were moved to the newly established NASA Launch Operations Center. The NASA Launch Operations Center was built north of Cape Canaveral on Merritt Island, when it became evident that Complexes 34 and 37 would not be able to support all of the planned Apollo launches.

After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, President Lyndon B. Johnson joined the two facilities under one name: John F. Kennedy Space Center. To avoid confusion, the two facilities were later renamed (separately) to "John F. Kennedy Space Center, NASA," and "Cape Kennedy Air Force Station." Starting with the Apollo 8 mission in December of 1968, all manned launches were conducted at the John F. Kennedy Space Center (later renamed to "Kennedy Space Center," and frequently abbreviated to "KSC").

Cape Kennedy Air Force Station continued to support unmanned launches. It was renamed Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in 1973. In 1992, CCAFS was renamed to Cape Canaveral Air Station (CCAS). Most recently, in 2000, the name was changed back to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
======================

Our (Navy) launch pad was at the very tip of Cape Canaveral.

I was there from late 1993 to early 2000.
--
Skitt (AmE)


.

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