Access to the spaceport tightened after 9/11

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The attacks of September 11 also impacted Brevard County’s most noted industry: space launches.

Secure facilities like Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (then an Air Force station) went on high alert along with Patrick Air Force Base, which acts as the command hub for rocket launches and local military leadership.

State Road A1A, for example, was closed for months as officials realized the gravity of the situation and vulnerability of facilities – namely Air Force buildings a stone’s throw from the road – in what quickly appeared to feel like the beginning of wartime.

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“For all intents and purposes, whether it was declared or not, this country was at war,” Dale Ketcham, vice president of government and external relations at Space Florida who lived here at the time, said. “Pretty much everybody who’s anybody was putting concrete barricades out. If it looked even remotely government-related, you were going in a defensive posture.”

The changes were long-lasting, too, especially in the realm of access to the spaceport. Media members with permanent access badges, for example, were previously allowed to bring friends and family members with them onto Kennedy Space Center property to watch space shuttle launches. After the attacks, the badges were revoked, re-evaluated, and issued again to a more selective group.

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“It was a major impact to us then trying to build a commercial space enterprise,” Ketcham said. “When something like that happens, access through the gates pretty much goes away. Business as usual ended abruptly.”

Since then, commercial space companies like SpaceX have moved operations into the confines of KSC and the Cape. And others like Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket factory are just outside KSC’s main gate, though the company does have a pad at Launch Complex 36 secured by private and Space Force personnel.

“In retrospect, looking back to a lot of behavioral patterns, they were an overreaction, but of course we didn’t know that at the time," Ketcham said. "Force protection was an appropriate immediate response.”

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