The Space Coast is finally getting its own SpaceX Falcon 9 booster – Florida Today

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After more than a decade of hosting launches of SpaceX's workhorse rocket, the Space Coast is finally getting a Falcon 9 booster to call its own.

Starting next year, Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex guests will be able to explore the nineMerlin main engines, re-entry scorch marks,grid fins used for in-flight steering, and massive landing legs attached to the 156-foot booster built in California. All that hardware helped launch two missions: the Thaicom 8 communications satellite in 2016 and the three-core Falcon Heavy's premiere in 2018.

Unlikehistoric rockets in the complex's "Rocket Garden" like early Atlas and Mercury-Redstone, however, Falcon 9 will get special treatment: it will be mounted horizontally in a new attraction called "Gateway: The Deep Space Launch Complex." It was transported from SpaceX's spaceport facilities to the Visitor Complex on Tuesday.

"It will be hung in such a way that guests will be able to experience it from a 360 point of view," Howard Schwartz, senior director of marketing and sales for the Visitor Complex, told FLORIDA TODAY. "The facility itself is a multi-tiered facility, so guests will be able to see it from the ground floor and as they go up to the second floor."

Since it functioned as a side booster during Falcon Heavy's first flight, it includes the conical "cap" used for aerodynamic purposes. It will remain uncleaned, or "sooty" as space fans like to call it, and keepsthe buildup of black marks caused by its fiery re-entry and subsequent landing at Cape Canaveral's Landing Zone 1.

"This is the first of many different space partner artifacts that we'll have within the building, so our guests are going to have a full 360 visceral experience," Schwartz said of the 53,000-square-foot facility. "There's a lot of hands-on things, a lot of video stuffwe're going to have."

"In addition to that, we're also going to have a must-see space exploration ride within the facility" that will will be revealed closer to the attraction's 2022 opening, he said. The attraction is designed to feature the future of NASA and commercial spaceflight, whereas others like the space shuttle Atlantis exhibit and Apollo/Saturn V Center take on a more historic angle.

To date, the Falcon 9 family has become one of the most prolific and reliable rockets in history. It's flown more than 120 times from a mix of Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Since the first in late 2015, the rocket has also pulled off 90-plusautonomous landings on drone ships and land-based pads.

It currently is the only rocket used to send humans to space from U.S. soil.

The Space Coast hosted nearly all of Falcon 9's firstsincluding landings, debut flights, the first-ever re-flight of a landed booster, and more. Despite that, Space Center Houston in Texas put one of the rockets on display in late 2020, though its attraction is located outdoors and lacks encapsulation in a building like the one coming to the Visitor Complex. SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, also has one on display outside in a vertical orientation with its landing legs deployed.

SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launches from KSC, boosters land at Cape Canaveral

SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018 and landed two of the side boosters at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

That's not to say displaying used hardwareisn't an involved process from borrowing agreements to planning to permitting to actual construction, a significant amount of paperwork and hands-on effort goes into presentingspaceflight history.

"Everything has been done from a safety and hazard precaution point of view to make sure that this is able to be viewed from a guest perspective for a long period of time," Schwartz said. "So a lot of work has been done by our partners at SpaceX and our teams here to make sure it is guest-facing from a safety standards and hazards sense."

Schwartz was unable to provide information on pricing agreements, the length of time SpaceX agreed to lend the booster, and other details related to the new attraction. He did say, however, that the Visitor Complex was excited about the booster and in-the-works agreements with hardware from other companies.

Falcon 9'snext flight, meanwhile, is tentatively planned for no earlier than late September. A batch of Starlink satellites will fly from KSC's pad 39A or the Cape's Launch Complex 40 followed by a booster landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

For the latest, visit floridatoday.com/launchschedule.

Contact Emre Kelly at aekelly@floridatoday.com or 321-242-3715. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @EmreKelly. Support space journalism by subscribing atfloridatoday.com/specialoffer/.

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The Space Coast is finally getting its own SpaceX Falcon 9 booster - Florida Today