"We were looking for the most historic place we could find to bring in the new millennium and celebrate our achievements in space, and I cannot think of a more historic site," said NBC News correspondent and party organizer Jay Barbree.
"This, in essence, is where we flew our first orbital flights - and those, of course, laid the foundation for going to the moon."
Put on as part of a yearlong celebration of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the first launch from the Cape, the gala turned out to be one of the most unique Y2K parties in the world.
"I am convinced that by the end of the century we will be knocking on the door at the edge of our solar system, ready to explore galaxies beyond."
Musgrave enjoyed looking out over the crowd of 500 and told the audience, "It's nice to run into so many familiar faces. Over 30 years, I put my life in your hands and I'm still here."
He paid homage to the party's setting, saying, "The spirit of spaceflight is here. But although the history is here, the future is here as well."
Mitchell, who piloted Apollo 14 along with Alan Shepard and Stuart Roosa, waxed poetic about the possibilities for human spaceflight in the coming years.
"I am convinced that by the end of the century we will be knocking on the door at the edge of our solar system, ready to explore galaxies beyond," Mitchell said.
Aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing towed real Atlas and Delta rockets to the site to serve as static displays and backdrops for national TV coverage of the party.
Herk Olsons former Disney World orchestra played dance music under a giant, open-air tent equipped with champagne fountains, open bars and dueling dance floors.
Culinary aficionados from Pumpernickels, the most popular German restaurant in nearby Titusville, dished up heavy hors doeuvres inside complex 14s concrete dome blockhouse.
The start of U.S. supremacy in space
After an excruciating string of 10 launch delays, Glenn blasted off from the site on Feb. 20, 1962, flying a mission that finally put the United States on equal footing with the former Soviet Union in Cold War battle for ideological and technological supremacy.
In the five preceding years, the Russians had scored one space coup after another while Americas fledgling program sputtered through an embarrassing series of rocket explosions and launch delays.
The Russians had shocked the world with the Oct. 4, 1957 launch of Sputnik, humankinds first artificial satellite.
Then on April 12, 1961, Red Air Force pilot Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space during an 89-minute orbital flight that triggered massive celebrations in the Kremlin - and a national inferiority complex in America.
NASA responded by launching Shepard less than a month later and Gus Grissom in July 1961. But both missions were suborbital flights - short 15-minute jaunts up and out of the atmosphere, followed by quick plunges back into the ocean.
Glenns flight was the first to match the Soviets round-the-world feat. And after three spins around the globe in his Friendship 7 spacecraft, the astronaut splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean while ecstatic Americans celebrated from coast-to-coast.
"John Glenn put us back in the game. Suddenly, there was this distinct feeling across the country that we were going to catch up with the Russians and pass them," said aerospace policy analyst David Webb of Daytona Beach, Fla.
Which, of course, is exactly what happened.
The final three Mercury missions piloted by astronauts Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra and Gordon Cooper, respectively all launched from complex 14, paving the way for NASAs Gemini program and then the historic Apollo moon landings.
Ultimately, the complex was abandoned in place by NASA and the U.S. Air Force, the latter of which operates the air station.
Launch site now features monument
Gone now is a 145-foot-tall launch tower that once jutted up from the landscape like a huge, orange oil derrick. Demolished in 1976, most if its metal was sold for scrap.
The concrete pad at the complex is crumbling, and a small Mercury monument that looks like a headstone stands at the base of a ramp that Atlas rockets once were towed up.
Glenn, nevertheless, has vivid memories of the site.
"I remember not only all the practices we did out there and all the dry runs but all the times when we were down there and didnt get to (launch)," Glenn said in a videotaped message to revelers gathered at the oceanside complex.
"But I remember most of all that time we did go and got our first orbit up there. And President Kennedy was out there on the pad with us afterward," he recalled.
Glenn, who was attending the White House Millennium Dinner on New Year's Eve, said he was sorry he couldnt join the many members of the NASA team that made his 1962 flight a milestone success.
"But as we get into this new millennium here, were looking forward to a really great space program. And many of you right there tonight are the ones who started the whole thing," he said.
"So youve got a lot to celebrate tonight and were there with you in spirit."
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