The buttons on the console boxes light up – red, yellow, green. Then the room goes dark, and a monitor shows a rocket – 3, 2, 1. Footage of a launch from the shuttle era plays on the screen at the American Space Museum in Titusville.

A picture of the console room also sits in the middle of the exhibit. Over two dozen people stand shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the same monitor. No one is smoking, though they used to during countdown, before it was considered a distraction.

Outside, two model rockets stand by the doorway, reminders of the Apollo era. A replica of the spacesuit worn in the 1960s and ’70s is displayed near the patches for sale, one for each Apollo mission, an Orion flight test and the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

Compared to the Kennedy Space Center, the place attracts a modest crowd. Leroy Kullman thinks Titusville – a little northwest of Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral – looks nearly the same as it did after the Apollo program ended in 1975.

“It’s kind of desolate. It’s not humming,” said Kullman, who once worked on the lunar module.

Titusville may be best defined by glory days, but the region has seen its fortunes rally. The satellite business is booming, and private companies are stepping in where NASA stepped back. It’s too soon yet, but someday, they hope to send astronauts into space from the same launchpads that propelled men toward the moon. Someday, they want to bring back not just the money but the magic.

Read the full story at the Tampa Bay Times.