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It is a history, however, that deserves to be celebrated and that spirit is at the core of Florida's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. It is a dream destination for anyone who has been fascinated by spaceflight. The creators of the Visitor's Complex obviously understand their audience well. It is something far more exciting than a museum yet possesses far more dignity and respect than a theme park. Simply the sensation of staring up at a 109-foot Titan II rocket can be as exciting for some of us as any thrill ride. But there's far more in store. You get your first sense of the Space Center's scale long before you enter the complex; the gargantuan Vehicle Assembly Building dominates the horizon for miles. But as you enter the Visitor Complex, the Rocket Garden immediately grabs your attention. There are seven rockets from a Mercury-era Redstone to a Saturn 1B from the Apollo program, each one looking far bigger in person than they ever appeared on TV. Beside it is the Early Space Exploration exhibit; the one building that does give the sense of being a museum. It includes not only actual spacecraft and artifacts, but also the recreation of the Project Mercury Mission Control center (actually a good deal smaller than you would imagine). A bus tour will take you around a portion of 219 square mile Center, which is not only a launch facility but one of the best-kept wildlife preserves in the state. As you tour the space center proper, you'll see a flurry of construction activity around Launch Complex 39. Elon Musk's SpaceX is rebuilding pad 39A for its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. And the reason the Shuttle gantries are being cleared from 39B are to make way for the equally ambitious NASA/Boeing Space Launch System rocket that will carry the Orion capsule into orbit and possibly beyond. You will almost always see at least one of the other pads across the Banana River at Cape Canaveral being prepared for a launch. The last stop on the tour is the Apollo/Saturn V Center, the centerpiece of which is the largest rocket ever built, suspended above samples of FOLLOWING THE SHUTTLE: SPACEX CONSTRUCTION AT LAUNCH COMPLEX 39A FEATURE 104 MacDirectory