President John F. Kennedy was one of the key driving forces behind the United States’ entry into the space race and its ultimate conclusion, in which the U.S. landed on the moon in the summer of 1969.
In 1962, Kennedy was the one who really pushed the United States into the space race with the Soviet Union, declaring in his famous speech that the country would land on the moon – “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” – before the end of the decade.
Sadly, Kennedy wouldn’t be alive to see it happen, having been assassinated in November 1963.
All of this being said, and taking into account his role in the early days of the American space program, it makes sense Lyndon Johnson would want to do something to honor the slain president, beyond actually trying to help fulfill the quite insane prediction at the time that the United States would soon be traipsing on the moon.
Lyndon Johnson Renames Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy
Cape Canaveral, located off the eastern coast of Florida, was originally a test site for missiles dating back to 1949. The cape was chosen as a launch site due to its relative proximity to the equator and the ability to take advantage of the Earth’s rotation. This made it a logical location for one day launching space rockets – thus, the NASA Launch Operations Center was born.
The Launch Operations Center would soon become the Kennedy Space Center, but first, President Johnson decided to simply rename Cape Canaveral after his predecessor, issuing the executive order in 1963. Jacqueline Kennedy initially suggested that Johnson renaming NASA’s facility there would be an appropriate memorial, but Johnson took it one step further.
As it turns out, nobody in Floria really loved it right from the start.
Honoring the recently deceased president aside, Floridians – particularly those in the nearby city of Cape Canaveral – likely thought renaming the Launch Operations Center in Kennedy’s name was more than enough, as Kennedy’s wife intended. That was Lyndon Johnson, though; he didn’t like to do anything small on a small scale, for better or worse.
It would take ten years for the cape to be changed back. The name change was approved by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names within the Department of the Interior, so it took a Florida law passed in May 1973 to get the job done in restoring the 400-year-old name. To the Kennedy family’s credit, they issued a statement to say they understood the decision. The Kennedy family is still issuing statements these days, but recently it’s been to distance itself from Robert Kennedy Jr. as much as possible in his quest to push every conspiracy on the planet.
At the end of the day, the Kennedy Space Center name still exists, and Floridians have decided that’s a fine amount of honor for the assassinated president. Still though, Cape Kennedy had its own wild ride for a decade, as it saw the launches some of the most important missions in NASA history, including all of the Gemini and Apollo missions, along with the first Skylab missions.
