CAPE CANAVERAL: EXPLORING THE SPACE FROM FLORIDA

Natalia Bean at Kennedy Space Center

Today, The Beans have visited Cape Canaveral in Florida. After leaving Washington D.C., the family has travelled to the south to visit this important place, headquarter of the Kennedy Space Center.  

Natalia Bean, who is the astronaut of the family, has enjoyed this trip especially and she has been talking to her family about the importance of the occupational hazards in this difficult profession where they have to do some routines and activities to be ready to drive into space.

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Cape Canaveral, from the Spanish Cabo Cañaveral, is a cape in Brevard County, Florida, near the center of the state's Atlantic coast. Known as Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973, it lies east of Merritt Island, separated from it by the Banana River. It was discovered by the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León in 1513.

It is part of a region known as the Space Coast, and is the site of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Since many U.S. spacecraft have been launched from both the station and the Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island, the two are sometimes conflated with each other. In homage to its spacefaring heritage, the Florida Public Service Commission allocated area code 321, as in a launch countdown, to the Cape Canaveral area.

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The Beans visit the Kennedy Space Center

Other features of the cape include the Cape Canaveral lighthouse and Port Canaveral, one of the busiest cruise ports in the world. 

The city of Cape Canaveral lies just south of the Port Canaveral District. 

Mosquito Lagoon, the Indian River, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Canaveral National Seashore are also features of this area.

Cape Canaveral became the test site for missiles when the legislation for the Joint Long Range Proving Ground was passed by the 81st Congress and signed by President Harry Truman on May 11, 1949. Work began on May 9, 1950, under a contract with the Duval Engineering Company of Jacksonville, Florida, to build the Cape's first paved access road and its first permanent launch site.

More information: Kennedy Space Center

The first rocket launched at the Cape was a V-2 rocket named Bumper 8 from Launch Complex 3 on July 24, 1950. On February 6, 1959, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile was accomplished. NASA's Project Mercury and Gemini space flights were launched from Cape Canaveral, as were Apollo flights using the Saturn I and Saturn IB rockets.

Cape Canaveral was chosen for rocket launches to take advantage of the Earth's rotation. The linear velocity of the Earth's surface is greatest towards the equator; the relatively southerly location of the cape allows rockets to take advantage of this by launching eastward, in the same direction as the Earth's rotation.

More information: NASA

An astronaut in a space mission

It is also highly desirable to have the downrange area sparsely populated, in case of accidents; an ocean is ideal for this. The east coast of Florida has logistical advantages over potential competing sites. The Spaceport Florida Launch Complex 46 of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is the easternmost near the tip of the cape.

From 1963 to 1973, the area had a different name when President Lyndon Johnson by executive order renamed the area Cape Kennedy after President John F. Kennedy, who had set the goal of landing on the moon. After Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, suggested to President Johnson that renaming the Cape Canaveral facility would be an appropriate memorial. Johnson recommended the renaming of the entire cape, announced in a televised address six days after the assassination, on Thanksgiving evening.

More information: Space Coast Launches

Accordingly, Cape Canaveral was officially renamed Cape Kennedy. Kennedy's last visit to the space facility was on November 16, six days before his death; the final Mercury mission had concluded six months earlier.

Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next 10. 

Neil Armstrong

THE AMERICAN INDIANS, THE REAL TREASURE OF THE USA

The Beans visit the NMAI in Washington D.C.

Today, The Beans have visited The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. They have enjoyed a lot visitiing this place and they have decided to visit a Native American Indian Community in a few days.

The National Museum of the American Indian is part of the Smithsonian Institution and is committed to advancing knowledge and understanding of the Native cultures of the Western Hemisphere—past, present, and future—through partnership with Native people and others. 

The museum works to support the continuance of culture, traditional values, and transitions in contemporary Native life. It has three facilities: the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which opened on September 21, 2004, on Fourth Street and Independence Avenue, Southwest; the George Gustav Heye Center, a permanent museum in New York City; and the Cultural Resources Center, a research and collections facility in Suitland, Maryland. 

More information: National Museum of the American Indian

The foundations for the present collections were first assembled in the former Museum of the American Indian in New York City, which was established in 1916, and which became part of the Smithsonian in 1990.

Traditional Navajo Jewelry

Following controversy over the discovery by Native American leaders that the Smithsonian Institution held more than 12,000–18,000 Indian remains, mostly in storage, United States Senator Daniel Inouye introduced in 1989 the National Museum of the American Indian Act.Passed as Public Law 101-185, it established the National Museum of the American Indian as a living memorial to Native Americans and their traditions. 

The Act also required that human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony be considered for repatriation to tribal communities, as well as objects acquired illegally. Since 1989 the Smithsonian has repatriated over 5,000 individual remains – about 1/3 of the total estimated human remains in its collection.

More information: History.com

On September 21, 2004, for the inauguration of the Museum, Senator Inouye addressed an audience of around 20,000 American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians, which was the largest gathering in Washington D.C. of indigenous people to its time.

Native Americans' families experience living surrounded, 

living in increasingly small reservations surrounded by the society 

that destroyed their civilization, and are still stigmatized. 

 For decades and decades, for hundreds of years except in Indian schools, they weren't allowed to speak their language. 

That stigma takes a terrible toll. 

 Joshua Oppenheimer