CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA's last space shuttle rolled out of a hangar in Florida on Friday and traveled down the road to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to begin a new life as a museum piece.

Atlantis is the third and final shuttle to be retired and turned over for public display after the end of the 30-year-old shuttle program last year.

"Don't cry because it's over; smile because we had it," Patty Stratton, a manager with shuttle contractor United Space Alliance, told workers gathered before dawn outside the Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building.

The 1960s-era Apollo complex, later used to pair shuttles with booster rockets and fuel tanks for flight, now stands empty.

Kennedy Space Center is in the midst of a transition to support a planned heavy-lift rocket and deep space capsule able to fly astronauts to destinations beyond the International Space Station's 250-mile orbit.

NASA intends to turn over station crew ferry flights to private companies.

For now, Russia has the only transportation system to fly astronauts to the station, a service that costs the United States more than $60 million per seat.

Mounted on top of a 76-wheel flatbed trailer, Atlantis began its final journey before dawn on a clear and cool autumn day at the seaside Florida spaceport. It made several stops along the 10-mile (16-km) route before reaching the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex just after 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT).

"It traveled a lot faster in its previous life," quipped former astronaut Chris Ferguson, who commanded the last shuttle flight aboard Atlantis. "I think that maybe a generation or two of pilots after me are going to look at the space shuttle and wonder what it was like to fly that."

Hundreds of current and former employees, including dozens of astronauts, paraded with the shuttle as it slowly made its way beyond the space center's security gates into the publicly accessible Exploration Park, where about 8,000 people had gathered to welcome Atlantis.

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Last NASA space shuttle becomes museum piece