Kennedy Space Center Intrnduces Heroes & Legends

摘要

When astronaut Gene Cernan passed away in January, the death of the last man to walk on the moon cast the entire US space program in a new light, as hopeful as it was nostalgic.It saw us remembering the. 50th anniversary of the tragic Apollo I fire at the same time we watched the beginnings of SpaceX and other commercial rocket ventures literally get off the ground. At about the same time, the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, on the campus of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Merritt Island, off Florida's Space Coast, was about to reopen after its relocation there from its previous home near Titusville FF. The timing was purely coincidental, of course, but it reinforced the irony that what many regard as our species' highest achievement has lelt little more than a lew million dollars' worth of hardware sitting forlorn and unvisited on our only natural satellite's airless surface for the last 44 years.