Cape Canaveral Air Force Station became America’s proving ground for space flight, with more than 3,300 launches since 24 July 1950 across nearly 16,000 acres that included launch complexes, assembly buildings, support facilities, and operations tied to the U.S. Navy at Port Canaveral and NASA at Kennedy Space Center. At Launch Complex 26, the Cape’s oldest surviving gantry, originally an oil derrick, was adapted to shield rockets and give technicians access as it moved on railroad tracks between pads 26A and 26B, while a heavily reinforced blockhouse with thick walls, a dome-shaped roof, blast doors, and multi-paned windows protected workers only 400 feet from the pads. Built as a dual-pad, single-blockhouse installation for the U.S. Army’s Redstone and Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missile programs, the complex began construction in 1956, was occupied by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in May 1957, cost approximately $6,808,000, and supported 36 launches from August 1957 to January 1963. Its history included the launches of primates Gordo, Able, and Baker, the launch of Explorer I as the first U.S. satellite, and NATO Jupiter combat training for Italian and Turkish missile crews. Pad 5 at the Cape launched Ham and the first two Americans in space, Alan Shepard and Virgil I “Gus” Grissom. Several Cape sites, including Complex 26, became National Historic Landmarks in 1984. Since opening to the public in 1966, the Air Force Space and Missile Museum at historic Launch Complex 26 has introduced millions of visitors to the history of rocketry and space flight through the original blockhouse, firing rooms with preserved equipment, and exhibits including a full-scale Explorer I model, a “monkeynauts” display, one of only two complete German V-2 engines in the U.S., Gemini II, and a tribute to General Bernard A. Schriever.