A launch control panel at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

NASA Launch Complex 34, site of the Apollo 1 tragedy. On January 27, 1967 astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee lost their lives on this pad during a pre-flight test when a fire swept through the command module. Two years before the accident, Gus Grissom, who was to be the commander of Apollo 1, was interviewed and said, “If we die, we want people to accept it. We’re in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”

A multimedia presentation at the Kennedy Space Center brings to life the 30-year Space Shuttle Program as well as the complexity and magnitude of the engineering marvel that launched like a rocket, flew in orbit like a spacecraft and landed on a runway like a glider.

A replica of the space shuttle external tank is painted by a maintenance worker at the entrance to the Atlantis Pavilion at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL. The tank, at 154 feet, is taller than the Statue of Liberty (151 feet) and was the structural backbone of the shuttle vehicle.

A heat shield protected the two-man Gemini spacecraft against the enormous heat of re-entering Earth's atmosphere at a velocity of more than 17,000 mph. The surface of the capsule reached temperatures of 2,700 °F as it descended to Earth.

Standing tall, the Titan II (center) was an intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) designed to deliver nuclear weapons across oceans to the military and population centers of a nation that was believed to be a threat to the survival of the United States. As a reliable weapon of the Cold War, the last Titan was decommissioned in 1987.