FUTURE IN DOUBT CAPE KENNEDY THE FIRST SPACE-AGE GHOST TOWN?

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32536, 20 February 1971, Page 16

FUTURE IN DOUBT CAPE KENNEDY THE FIRST SPACE-AGE GHOST TOWN?

(By

DERRYN HINCH.

reporting to the "Sydney Morning Herald" from Cape Kennedy)

“ " O / (Reprinted by arrangement)

The “Beeline Expressway”—a typical jumbo-sized American high-way-used to lead from Florida’s Orlando Airport towards the most famous dateline in recent history; Cape Kennedy.

Now this road, which you can barrel along at 100 miles per hour, leads to what is fast becoming the first spaceage ghost town. The destination is the same, but almost over-night the Cape Kennedy area has changed from a bride to an ageing mistress. In the 19605, with the heady excitement of men landing on the Moon, Cape towns like Cocoa Beach were booming. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (N.A.S.A.), with unlimited riches, showered trinkets on the area. Lucrative contracts for space fell like ripe plums. The life was fast, the money was easy and businessmen rode to the bank on a gold rocket.

Allowance cut But then rich daddy—in the form of the Federal Government—cut the allowance the day Neil Armstrong placed his heavy footprint on the Moon, and the good life at the Cape started to fall apart.

Headline from local newspaper: “Bright future for Cape economy.” Inside same paper a report showing that the Federal Housing Authority repossessed 862 houses last month from out of work owners who could not meet mortgage payments.

I first drove down the “Beeline Expressway" in July, 1969, shortly before Apollo 11 thundered into history from the launch pad on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. It was exciting to be here . . . not only to see history made but because you could feel the surge of progress in the air. New hotels and motels were rising like spring shoots to cope with the flood of newsmen, tourists and businessmen. There was much crystal-ball gazing. The locals spoke greedily about the Cape Kennedy of the future. It would be the world’s first moonport—a place from where spacemen would shuttle back and forth to stars and from where (in time) space-age tourists would catch a rocket to the Moon. Real-estate prices made Sydney waterfrontages look like give-aways. But after Apollo 11, public interest turned to apathy and Government benevolence ran out, Cape Kennedy was on the skids. In September, 1970, the unemployment rate in Cape Kennedy’s Brevard County was 7.6 per cent. The 10,000 space workers were laid off in the first 18 months after Apollo 11. The 1972 Budget released two days before the blast-off of Apollo 14 showed that 1500 more N.A.SA. employees would become ex-N.A.S.A. employees. Fire gives hint Things are bad at Cape Kennedy, and they can only get worse. Local businesses were given a hint of how things could change during the 18-month drought of space flights after the disastrous Apollo 11 launch-pad fire which killed Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee. For 18 months there were no floods of tourists to watch the blastoffs, no expense-account journalists to separate from their money, no big-spending public relations men from N.A.S.A. contractors.

Apollo 8, the first manned flight in the programme that put human footprints on the Moon, started the cash registers merrily ringing again. Nobody suspected it was a final fling.

In June, 1972, Apollo 15, the last manned flight in the Apollo programme, will lift off from Cape Kennedy (if it isn’t cancelled in the next 18 months). In 1973 the United States’ first earth orbiting laboratory will be launched from here, but the main interest in space in the seventies will be the “space shuttle.” To ferry astronauts the relatively short distances from earth to a rendezvous station, the giant Saturn 5s are unnecessary. The chances are 90 per cent against Cape Kennedy being the site of the shuttleport, and the current front-runner for that location is Andrews Air Force Base in California.

And so the money flow to the Cape dries up, the work lay-offs increase, empty houses stand unsold, busi-

nesses close, the divorce rate rises.

The plumbing in my hotel room doesn’t work properly. Not much use complaining. The place “The Ramada Inn,” one of the biggest and best-known on the strip, has been in receivership three times. The “Cape Kennedy Hilton” closed down. It was bought by fire-and-brimstone preacher, Dr Carl Mclntyre, who plans to turn it into a holiday retreat for teetotalling believers. Even the ashtrays were thrown out. To entice customers, bars in the area offer two drinks for the price of one: "Happy hour” from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., with prices down 75 per cent, free drinks to single girls and the growing legion of divorcees . . . door prizes for lucky drinkers. Optimistic residents (who are hard to find) insist this is all a temporary slump and that business will come back.