Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
Kennedy Space Center, Florida

When Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex set out to create its newest attraction, Gateway: The Deep Space Launch Complex, they turned to longtime partner BRPH for its creative and technical expertise as well as its experience in handling and displaying priceless space artifacts.

BRPH worked alongside Delaware North Parks & Resorts at KSC (DNCPR) from the inception of the project in 2017, helping the clients develop the vision for the attraction – a thrilling two-story motion theater and a showcase of priceless NASA and commercial space hardware and displays.

During the design phase, BRPH faced the challenge of planning for a 160-foot-long SpaceX Falcon 9 booster to be suspended above the exhibit floor. The building plan accommodated an open wall through which the artifact, the width of a football field and 12-feet in diameter, could be expertly guided into place prior to completion of the ingress point. The scorched twice-flown booster appears as if floating overhead with the use of a custom-engineered, high-strength “tri-pyramid” cable system.

To accommodate new artifacts or hardware in years to come, BRPH designed a vehicle prep room at the rear of the attraction, outfitted with interior and exterior sets of high bay doors. To help move multi-ton items like the Orion capsule, the firm installed a10-ton bridge crane between the two sets of high bay doors and an air pallet system around the perimeter of the Exhibit Hall—similar to the technology in NASA’s Operations and Checkout building where the Orion capsule is processed—a facility BRPH also designed.