Wither Florida's Space Coast tourism? - Montreal Gazette

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - Besides several theme parks, including Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World, the region near Orlando known as Florida's Space Coast also includes the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex about 70 kilometres east of Orlando and next to the Kennedy Space Center.

The centre is a U.S. air force base in Cape Canaveral that is home to the space shuttle launch pads and is the birthplace of the American space age as the site of the Mercury space rocket program from 1958 to 1961.

With the end of the 30-year space shuttle program this week, many residents in the area are in the dumps about job losses, estimated at close to 30,000 in terms of direct and indirect jobs that depended on the shuttle program.

Shuttle-related tourism also boosted the economy over the years. That too is in transition.

"This town's pretty much drying up," Carter Secosh, 48, said as he watched the July 8 launch of the last shuttle in the fleet, Atlantis, from his perch at Kev's Auto and Marine Upholstery shop in Titusville, a town directly across a bay from the launch pad.

Thousands of shuttle fans poured through the street after watching the final launch. "There's nothing for all these people to come back for," he said.

Andrea Farmer, a spokeswoman for the Space Center Visitor Complex, basically a museum dedicated to all things space, said the complex will actually grow despite the end of the shuttle program. A $100 million U.S. space shuttle exhibit building is being built with the shuttle Atlantis as its main centrepiece. It is to open in 2013, she said.