The Land-Use Reinvention of Cape Canaveral

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—Few expanses of land have such a vivid connection to the heavens than here. As the nation’s grandstand, Cape Canaveral has been the site of over 3,000 rocket and missile launches and 135 space shuttle liftoffs. It’s a place that utterly symbolizes our constant urge to explore, each time the countdown commences and the white plumes spiral up from earth to sky.

Yet these 130,000 acres of sand and scrub brush have lately been on the brink, as NASA fights for its future. With the termination of the space shuttle program in 2011, and Congress generally in no mood to spend billions for manned space travel to Mars, the once bustling mid-section of Florida’s eastern coast was set to be oddly quiet. If we aren’t going to have a big space program, after all, we don’t need a big spaceport. Hand it back to the alligators.