Point of Interest Dossier: Cape Canaveral Space Force StationCopy Anchor Link

"The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which was just how they wanted it for the moment. The huge yellow somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them — which was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years."

— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 3

Overview & Geographic SettingCopy Anchor Link

Situated along the barrier islands of Brevard County on the Atlantic coast of Florida on planet Earth (Sol III), Cape Canaveral was humanity's most ambitious launch site and spaceport.

Known affectionately to terrestrial inhabitants as The Space Coast, the territory was defined by towering steel launch gantries, miles of concrete flame trenches, the colossal monolith of the Vehicle Assembly Building, and extensive subtropical salt marshes populated by thousands of pelicans, manatees, and indifferent alligators that largely ignored the sound of multi-megawatt rocket engines.

Primitive Rocketry & The Chemical EraCopy Anchor Link

To galactic travel analysts, Cape Canaveral represents the absolute pinnacle of primitive combustion propulsion:

• The Brute Force Principle: Lacking even rudimentary knowledge of the Infinite Improbability Drive, hyperspatial bypass coils, or even simple sub-light ion thrusters, Cape Canaveral's scientists achieved escape velocity through the simple expedient of igniting enormous lakes of explosive propellant beneath brave pilots.
• The Lunar Expeditions: From Launch Complex 39A, the Apollo Saturn V boosters hurled three-man capsules across two hundred and forty thousand miles of vacuum to Earth's moon—a feat the Guide evaluates as: "Remarkably akin to crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub powered by a single stick of dynamite."

Passing Over Without a BlipCopy Anchor Link

On the Thursday of Earth's demolition, several dozen huge, chunky, yellow slablike Vogon Constructor Ships—each as huge as an office block and silent as a bird—soared quietly through the ionosphere basking in electromagnetic rays from Sol:

1. Zero Radar Return: Despite billions of Small Green Pieces of Paper invested in tracking radars and telemetry arrays, the huge yellow somethings passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, went unnoticed at Goonhilly, and were looked straight through by Woomera and Jodrell Bank—even though extraterrestrial visitors were "exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years."
2. The Sub-Etha Contrast: The only instrument on Earth that detected the fleet at all was the small black Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic winking quietly inside Ford Prefect's leather satchel in the English West Country.
3. The Final Broadcast: Cape Canaveral's personnel remained completely oblivious until the ships descended through the clouds with an ear-shattering sonic boom and Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz's quadrophonic PA announcement informed humanity that Earth's demolition orders had been on display in Alpha Centauri for fifty years.

Interstellar ExhibitionCopy Anchor Link

While the physical Cape Canaveral launchpads were atomized during the clearance of Hyperspatial Express Route 42, scale replicas of the Saturn V and Space Shuttle boosters are exhibited in the Museum of Early Combustive Struggles on Ursa Minor Beta, where visitors frequently weep with laughter at the notion of steering a spacecraft using solid fuel boosters and liquid hydrogen tanks.