BUMPER 8: THE FIRST LAUNCH FROM CAPE CANAVERAL

Before the gantries, before the countdown clocks, before the word 'spaceport' existed — there was a painted scaffold in the palmetto scrub and a rocket named Bumper.

A SCAFFOLD IN THE SCRUB

In 1950, Cape Canaveral was a remote stretch of Florida coastline chosen for one reason: rockets launched east from here fly over open ocean.

The first launch pad was little more than a concrete slab and a repurposed painter's scaffold.

THE ROCKET ITSELF

Bumper was a two-stage experiment: a captured German V-2 with a slender WAC Corporal sounding rocket mounted on its nose.

The program existed to answer a question nobody had tested — could you light a second stage in flight and make it count?

JULY 24, 1950

Bumper 8 lifted off on a low, flat trajectory over the Atlantic — the first launch ever conducted from Cape Canaveral.

The photograph of reporters crouched behind their cameras just a few hundred feet from the pad remains one of the most famous images in Cape history, from an era before anyone knew how far away 'safe' was.

FROM PALMETTO TO SPACEPORT

Everything that followed — Explorer, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the Shuttle, Artemis — traces back to that one flat arc over the ocean.

Every launch you've ever watched from a Space Coast beach started here.

EVERY SPACEPORT HAS A FIRST LAUNCH. OURS WAS A BORROWED V-2 AND A PAINTER'S SCAFFOLD.