CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA—According to a Florida Today report, college students from the University of Central Florida are investigating the Bumper Blockhouse website, which is situated at Launch Complex 3, in a nook of the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Bumper 8, a two-stage rocket launched from a small, wood-framed blockhouse on July 24, 1950, was the primary rocket launched from Cape Canaveral. Air Force pictures from the time present that the small picket constructing had been protected by a sand embankment strengthened with burlap luggage stuffed with sand or cement. The construction was geared up with a small window and mirrors that functioned like a periscope to view the launch. “In the time of Bumper, it would have been very crude—just minimal information coming back from the rocket,” mentioned Roger McCormick, a Cape Canaveral Space Force Museum volunteer. The picket construction was changed with a concrete blockhouse in 1951 for extra rocket launches all through the last decade. The college students have surveyed and mapped the positioning, they usually have dug check pits, uncovering a bundle of cables, concrete, metallic particles, and chunks of charred asphalt. A deliberate survey with ground-penetrating radar could detect any remaining traces of the buildings. To examine restoration of rocket engines from the manned Apollo missions, go to “Apollo Returns from the Abyss.”
