JFK Space Center, Vehicle Assembly Building

Postmarked March 27, 1968 Evanston, Ill.

Hi-

We went on this bus tour of Cape Kennedy on Friday.  We went into this biggest building in the world & we also saw the Saturn V rocket to be launched in April.

JOHN F. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA NASA

NASA's Vehicle Assembly Bldg. (VAB) 525 ft. tall, occupying 8 acres of land, world's largest building in volume, where Apollo- Saturn Space Vehicles are assembled and prepared for lunar launch.

Andy Strain

583 Brookside Rd.

Barrington, Illinois 60010

With the recent scrub and retry on Tuesday of the SpaceX Dragon launch vehicle, I thought we'd travel over to the space coast for these next two cards, from the same sender, John.  You may notice that John refers to a Cape Kennedy, which is the name given to Cape Canaveral shortly after the President's assassination.  Since the Canaveral name had been established since the time of Ponce deLeon, many Floridans on the Space Coast objected, and finally got the state of Florida to restore the Canaveral name in 1973.  The Kennedy name is still memorialized in the title of the launch center and tourist attraction, of course.  

The Vehicle Assembly Building, built in 1966, was originally built to assemble the Saturn rockets for the Apollo missions.  It's one and half times the height of the Statue of Liberty, and contains nearly twice the volume as the Pentagon.  It was the tallest building in Florida until the Wells Fargo (Modis/Independent Life) Tower was built in Jacksonville in 1974.  

The 3 bedroom, 2.25 bathroom house in Barrington was built in 1962, and was sold in 2000.  Andy never owned the house, since he was most likely a child when he received this card.  Today, he is the chair of the Tahoe Transportation District Board of Directors in Lake Tahoe, California.  I'll update this post if he replies to my email.