To put a satellite in a stable orbit you have to lift it at least 200 km and give it a forward speed of a whopping 7.8 km/s.

Making use of the rotational speed of the Earth helps, at the equator you get .5 km/s  for free if you launch to the east.

 

NASA's Kennedy Space Center KSC at Cape Canaveral sits at the right position, being relatively close to the equator and with thousands of km of empty ocean to the east if something goes wrong.

 

KSC has been the prime US launch-site since 1950 and all the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Spaceshuttle missions blasted off from one of the launch pads here.

 

Spaceshuttle Atlantis performed its last manned flight in July 2011. Since then US astronauts fly to and from the International Space Station aboard the reliable Russian operated Soyuz system.

 

The next manned flight from KSC will be in 2018 or later by a commercial carrier, probably SpaceX.

 

We visited the KSC complex in April 1992.