tagged w/ Edwards Air Force Base
-
Los Angeles Times...
The space shuttle's Southland legacy
The space shuttle program helped carry Southern California's aerospace industry for four decades, bequeathing new aeronautical technology — and jobs — to the local economy.
.
PART ONE...
By W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times
July 5, 2011
Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years.
He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields.
"Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling. "I never really thought it could come to this."
Photos: The shuttle's legacy in Southern California
Amid the odes to a shuttle program that ends with the last mission of the last shuttle, Atlantis, scheduled for liftoff Friday, is an awareness that the space plane helped carry Southern California's aerospace industry for four decades. It staved off decline after the end of the moon landings, bequeathing new generations of aeronautical technology — and jobs — to the regional economy.
"Building the space shuttle fleet enabled a historic chapter in NASA's space program," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former shuttle commander. "Southern California has a strong place in shuttle history as a key site where the spacecraft were built and often landed."
Constructing the shuttle fleet was testament to how advanced Southern California's aerospace engineering and labor workforce had become by the 1970s — and assured that the vast assemblage of brainpower and engineering know-how would not be lost in the Southland.
The history of the shuttle program may be linked forever to the flights of Challenger and Columbia, its two deadly tragedies. But the shuttle era will also be remembered for advancing technology, including reusable rocket engines and computerized guidance systems, that changed manned flight.
The shuttle is considered the world's most advanced flying machine because it blasted into space like a rocket, behaved in orbit like a floating laboratory, buzzed to and from the International Space Station with astronauts and supplies, and landed back on a runway like an airplane.
Before the shuttle, astronauts reached space by squeezing into a small capsule launched atop a massive rocket. By the time the shuttle was in design, the space program was looking for ways to keep as many as seven astronauts in orbit for weeks at a time in relative comfort.
To do this, scientists and engineers had to rethink nearly every aspect of the endeavor, notably flight controls, rocket engines and protection from searing heat generated by reentry.
"The shuttle was unlike anything that preceded it, so there were always new questions to answer," said Dwight Woolhouse, a shuttle engineer from the beginning of the program to this day.
The shuttle — large and aerodynamically unstable — needed sophisticated computer controls to guide the flight. The system, known as "fly by wire," is common on today's aircraft, but it was a rarity in flying machines in the 1970s. Engineers in Downey developed the computer-aided autopilot flight controls similar to today's systems that allow mammoth Boeing 747 jumbo jets to almost fly themselves.
CONTINUED...
.Los Angeles Times...
The space shuttle's Southland legacy
The space... more
-
-
Photographs of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (which flew as STS-125) departing from Edwards Air Force Base on Monday, June 1, 2009 and arriving at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, June 2, 2009.Photographs of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (which flew as STS-125) departing from... more
-
-
Astronaut Gordon Cooper's Sighting - In 1955, while stationed at Edwards Air Force Base, Mercury 7 Astronaut Gordon Cooper witnessed an event that has yet to be explained nearly 50 years later. He was supervising the filming of a precision landing facility for F-86 fighter jets. Suddenly, a saucer-like craft flew directly over the cameraman. Three landing gear apparatus opened, and the object landed on the dry lake bed.
MERCURY 7 ASTRONAUT GORDON COOPER recalls a UFO landing at Edwards Air Force Base. APOLLO ASTRONAUT EDGAR MITCHELL discloses his knowledge of the covert effort to keep the subject matter top secret. Military personnel testify to having witnessed UFOs disable nuclear missiles both in their silos and during test flights. PRESIDENTS GERALD FORD and JIMMY CARTER give accounts about their involvement with the UFO phenomenon.
General Nathan Twining's Memo: Is the U.S. Air Force hiding the truth about UFOs?
UFOs and J. Edgar Hoover: Was the head of the FBI refused access to the disc recovered at Roswell?
Wilbert Smith + Dr. Robert Sarbacher: Does the U.S. government classify UFO's "Above Top Secret"?
The Condon Report: Did the official investigation into UFOs prove or disprove their existence?
UFOs and Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars": Have DSP satellites detected UFOs?
.
Source: 'Out of the Blue - The Movie' - Link: http://www.outofthebluethemovie.com/
.
Astronomers Find A Hole In The Universe:
http://christiangeo-timeandspace.blogspot.com/
.
Governor Fife Symington, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
http://www.fifesymington.com/Astronaut Gordon Cooper's Sighting - In 1955, while stationed at Edwards Air... more
-
