Space Policy Edition: Return to Launch — Cape Canaveral's unlikely history

What makes Cape Canaveral the center of U.S. spaceflight? The answer is a fascinating mix of geography, military strategy, Cold War politics, and a fair amount of historical accident.

In this episode of the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, host Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, sits down with Stephen C. Smith, author and writer behind the Substack The Space Pundit, to discuss his book Return to Launch: Florida and America's Space Industry. A longtime Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex communicator and Merritt Island resident, Smith brings a unique perspective to the story of how a remote Florida peninsula became the gateway to the Cosmos.

The conversation spans the full arc of Cape Canaveral's history, from captured Nazi V-2 rockets fired off a concrete slab in 1950, the Apollo era's dramatic economic boom and bust, and the rise of commercial spaceflight. Along the way, Smith and Dreier explore why Mexico's president inadvertently shaped U.S. launch site selection, how eminent domain built a spaceport, and what Space Florida did to help break the region's cycle of economic dependence on government programs.

Related Reading and References

• The Space Pundit
• Return to Launch: Florida and America's Space Industry
• Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
• Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
• Vandenberg Space Force Base
• Starbase, Texas
• Spaceport America
• Project Apollo | The Planetary Society 
• Artemis, NASA's Moon landing program | The Planetary Society
• Artemis II blasts off, sending humans back to the Moon     
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