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June 19, 2013
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 Look Homeward, Angels: California and the Rise and Fall of America’s Space ProgramPosted on Jul 30, 2011
Letter From the West is a monthly series by Deanne Stillman that explores what is going on in our wide open spaces and what we do to one another and all that lives there. To commemorate the end of the space program, I decided to watch the movie “October Sky,” which is all about its beginning. It starts in 1957, when a monumental thing occurs: Man grows wings and leaves planet Earth, circling it for the next three months in a satellite called Sputnik. Although it did not have a pilot, citizens of all nations were aboard the Russian ship by way of radio transmissions that were broadcast everywhere. In classrooms across America, children sat and listened to the eerie static and high-pitched wheeees and other assorted odd sounds that seemed to be coming through from another dimension. One of the children who heard the broadcast was Homer Hickham, responding to the sounds with a love of rockets that helped propel him out of a deadly Appalachian mining town and into the new frontier, as JFK later called the uncharted territory of the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt and the Milky Way. In the movie, Homer confronts his reluctant and fearful father, who runs the local mine and hopes that his son will some day reach that pinnacle. But Homer’s gaze is fixed on the heavens. When an accident incapacitates his father, Homer is forced to give up his dream and follow the family trail into the mines and darkness. But thanks to an intervention from his mother, Homer’s dream prevails. At the end of this tale, father joins son as they launch a rocket together, a moment of joy that reunites them, sending Homer on his new path as a rocketeer at NASA. At the iconic outfit of extraterrestrial exploration, he becomes a pivotal figure in America’s space program. The story told in “October Sky” is true. And the escape route it portrayed so well may now be permanently closed. While much of the coverage of the end of the space shuttle age has focused on Florida, the launching pad for many missions, it should be recalled that another region of the country was equally important, if not more so in some ways, in our explorations of outer space. I refer to the Antelope Valley of Los Angeles County, and in particular the Mojave city of Lancaster. Hardly as well known as many other parts of California, its population is still relatively small (300,000), although until recently it was one of the fastest-growing areas in the state. And in many ways it may be one of the most powerful cities in the world, considering that it and its environs are a vortex of might, munitions, engineering feats, flight records, outer space exploration, rocket science and nearly every other method by which America has attained complete air supremacy around the planet. Downtown Lancaster features its own answer to the Hollywood Walk of Fame: A strip there honors Chuck Yeager and other aviation pioneers—a parade of people known for having the right stuff. (Say what you will about American domination of the ethers, but who would dare call what these men had “the wrong stuff”? It would be blasphemy at its most extreme.) These American heroes are depicted in elaborate frescoes on the walls of local establishments, painstakingly created portraits that preserve these men for as long as the elements will permit it. There’s even a main drag called Challenger Way, and a stealth bomber is parked forever at a main intersection—not a sculpture of a stealth bomber, but the real thing; a frank and stunning monument to power. At nearby Edwards Air Force Base (at 301,000 acres the second-largest U.S. air base in the world), vast arsenals lurk in the sands, issuing a statement that crosses all language boundaries and only other men of the desert have dared to answer. At the Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works” and the hush-hush Air Force “Plant 42” in neighboring Palmdale, new technology is being dreamed up, cooked, molded, hardened and polished as I write, and every day, every few minutes in fact, warrior pilots in the Antelope Valley take off in sleek airborne envelopes, plying the skies and patrolling the world, seated at the controls of sophisticated, top-secret machinery that was forged in the magic dust of this region. Out of these glittering swirls came the U-2 spy plane, the F-22 Raptor (as with many high-speed aviation vehicles, its design is derived from the flight patterns and mechanics of real birds of prey), and the legendary SR-71 Blackbird, the titanium jet that moves at Mach 3.2 at 80,000 feet, has a range of 4,000 miles and is said to have kept Russia at bay during the Cold War; its feats are so astonishing that to this day no one except the people who made it and fly it know exactly what it does, and they are sworn to secrecy. Retired in 1999 (although rumored to still be in service, somewhere up there), it is now on display at the Blackbird Air Park at 25th Street East and Avenue P in Palmdale, along with the A-12, its predecessor, and the airborne workhorse of the 1950s, the U-2. Together, these jets represent four decades of a shadow history in which design visionaries such as Kelly Johnson at Skunk Works and dream factories such as Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop made it possible for America to win the battle for the heavens. Advertisement In a way, the whole thing started with dry lake beds, those great prehistoric wastes which seem to issue a challenge: “Hey you!” they call. “Come have a party! Fly me!” From the beginning of the 20th century through the present, many private citizens and a parade of military institutions have come to see the Antelope Valley as a place where you can test limits—and in fact the Antelope Valley is also called Aerospace Valley. In 1902, an early Antelope Valley settler set the first of many land speed records on Rosamond Dry Lake, whizzing across the sands on a sailboat with wheels. In 1902, the Corum family decided to homestead on the west side of Rogers Dry Lake, and soon a few others followed; thus was born the small town called Muroc—“Corum” backwards. From 1926 to ’33, many car-racing records were set on the Rosamond and Muroc dry lakes, including those set by racing legend Tommy Milton.
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By Jon, August 7, 2011 at 8:52 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
As someone who grew up in the middle of all
Report thisthis (my father started as a time card checker
on the SR-71 project and rose through the ranks
at Lockheed in his 29 !/2 years at the
company), this article brings back many
memories…in my sophomore year in high school,
the guy sitting in front of me in home room was
the son of Lockheed’s chief test pilot, the
girl to my right was the daughter of a man who
walked on the moon, and to her right was Joe
Walker Jr.-the son of the X-15 pilot killed in
a testing accident during the XB-70/SST
program. I can remember sitting in class at
Quartz Hill High School as teachers had to stop
talking as an SR-71 would take off on a path
leading it over the school, and on one occasion
trying to change a flat tire for my mother on
Sierra Highway when a black jet took off right
over us, got about 200 feet off the ground,
then pointed the nose pretty much straight up
and all but disappeared…man was it loud.
(And because we happened to be stopped where we
were, this then 11 year old ended up watching
MPs finish changing the tire when they
investigated why someone was parked right
there).
I can also remember the hush that would fall
over secretarial offices in high school and
college any time a large plume of black smoke
would rise up out of the desert from the
direction of Edwards AFB…most of the ladies
were married to someone who worked there, and
until word got around about what happened, the
silence was perceptible (unless it was the 2nd
Friday of the month-the day that contaminated
fuel was “burned off” at around 11am-something
we all knew was done on a consistent basis).
I remember a hot shot pilot at the flight test
school showing off by flying under the high-
tension electrical cables strung across Godde
Hill Road and setting the hillside on fire with
his exhaust-today, you’d burn down houses by
doing that, but back then, just a few buckwheat
bushes and manzanitas.
And finally, I remember a place which, if you
were interested in learning and science, found
ways to give you opportunities to experience
that, whether it was class field trips to the
NASA facility at Edwards (being in the bunker
for an actual rocket test is AWESOME!) to
having the chance to actually talk to and hear
the experiences of men who walked on the moon.
It’s true, as others here have noted, that the
community as a whole is considerably to the
right of just about anywhere in California (or
anywhere else for that matter), the religious
zealots play far too important a role in the
local society, and between the sun, the
constant wind, and the horrid influx of
methamphetamine cooks that began with the first
aerospace downturn in the 1980’s that people’s
brains can get cooked in their skulls. So much
of that, though, comes from the area being
ignored by anyone who doesn’t live there (try
finding a weather listing for Antelope
Valley/Lancaster or Palmdale in most
newspapers-even in California, the best you end
up with is usually Barstow), and the local
media (for many years, one EXTREMELY
conservative daily newspaper) controlling what
topics are even discussed within the community.
And don’t get me started on the area’s use as a
dumping ground for all things Los Angeles
considers odious-whether it’s their sewage,
their garbage, or the bodies of their gang
violence.
By Paul, August 5, 2011 at 6:46 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Let’s not be too quick to flatter Lancaster as a California municipal power vector
Report thismerely because it’s the testing ground and assembly site for military and space
hardware. I grew up there. It’s a backward, ultra-conservative stronghold led by a
racist, demagogue Mayor and represented in the state legislature by a reactionary
fundamentalist Christian who showed his stripes in high school and only got more
uptight as time went on. Cops who police LA choose to live there because
Antelope Valley politics perfectly suit their anti-urban mentality. Culturally, the
place exists in another time and place. Not quite the 1950s and not quite rural
Kansas. Better to let it Lancaster stew in its inflammatory retro-cultural juices
than to call any more attention than necessary to the mold that’s growing in that
civic Petri dish.
By BR549, August 2, 2011 at 4:46 am Link to this comment
Patrick Henry,
I was on the flight line when one had taken off after an emergency landing and repair in Korea. That happened several times, actually, but this one time we were doing to communications work when this thing went to leave. We were about 200 feet from it. Forget the ear muffs, the sound went right through your forehead. Almost 100 ft of vertically serrated white thrust ....... wish I had that on my pickup truck.
He took off, came back around with a low pass and a wig-wag, then pointed it straight up and only made a correction after what seemed like 30,000 feet. Hard to tell, but imagine what some indigenous tribesmen must have said to his fellows after seeing one of those for the first time.
Very impressive ..... and all done on a slide rule. Here we were with all this “hardware” and we still couldn’t finish Viet Nam, just like we are losing the battle in Afghanistan. Perhaps because we didn’t have the moral high ground and they had home court advantage. Maybe we should put the politicians into forced labor camps and do something more constructive with all those tax dollars.
Report thisBy PatrickHenry, August 2, 2011 at 3:21 am Link to this comment
BR549,
I saw them up close at Kadena in the 70’s, they leaked alot.
The side looking radar was suppose to look out 80 nautical miles on either side of the craft.
This technology is now offically ancient as we have drones which can beat this hands down.
Report thisBy BR549, August 1, 2011 at 3:55 pm Link to this comment
PatrickHenry, July 31 at 7:26 am
“Some 19 planes Flying since 1958 at 110,000k feet.”
That is what I had heard. The figures in this article are what they released to the public.
One of my roommates in the AF was a TACAN supervisor and said he had logged one in
from the Midwest to Okinawa in 2 hrs 55 min, which sounds about right, speedwise.
“Gold fuel lines were designed to handle JP-7 which was so corrosive it would eat through
other metals.” Apparently, they had to heat the fuel because it was fairly viscous (someone
can correct me on that) and the titanium plates were somewhat loosely jointed to allow for
expansion of even the titanium. The trick was to get the JP7 seeping aircraft aloft and up to
speed so that the joints would swell up enough to stop the seepage. The nacelle
temperatures were not uncommonly at 640F from the atmospheric friction, so it was no
wonder then that the ground crews approached it with asbestos attire.
I wasn’t aware of the gold fuel lines. Since diesel fuel has a lower dielectric constant than
Report thisgasoline, I can only imagine that JP7 might have been that much more of a problem.
By Michael Cavlan RN, July 31, 2011 at 4:01 pm Link to this comment
Let me see if I am getting this straight.
The president has proposed giving away Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The off the deep end, looney Tea Party Republicans are driving the agenda for the House Bill. Meanwhile Harry Reid has offered the looney, right wing Tea Party nut jobs just about everything they want in the Senate Bill.
Yet the TruthDig editorial has made the decision to have their top featured story about a small town, military hardware and the Space Program?
Oh wait, just like corporate media. If the owners push a story (Michael Jackson, murder of Kaylee Anthony) then investigate for the real story. The ones that the corporate owners are attempting to hide from you.
firedoglake
where real stories are present. Where articles that do NOT make apologies or excuses for the corporate plutocracy get ink.
Report thisBy ESMDbldg350, July 31, 2011 at 1:14 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The California Space Program also owes a lot to all the workers in plants in places like El Segundo and JPL in Pasadena.
Report thisBy TDoff, July 31, 2011 at 12:52 pm Link to this comment
One of the highlights of Lockheed’s Skunk Works programs with the various Blackbirds, was flying, day or night, cameras running, at the beginning and end of missions or training flights, over the Santa Barbara area home of Bo Derek. She loved to sunbathe, play and party at her poolside, enjoying the total privacy she thought her estate provided.
For years, at a certain Lancaster, Ca. bar, many a happy hour was enlivened as her pilot/admirers traded the latest snoop-shots (they referred to them by a different name).
Report thisBy Fred LaMotte, July 31, 2011 at 7:29 am Link to this comment
We need an earth program.
Report thisBy PatrickHenry, July 31, 2011 at 7:26 am Link to this comment
The Habu,
http://www.habu.org/photogallery.html
Some 19 planes Flying since 1958 at 110,000k feet.
When Gary Powers was shot down and the U-2 finally disclosed, the SR-71 was operational for 2 years.
Gold fuel lines were designed to handle JP-7 which was so corrosive it would eat through other metals. Special tankers had to be designed to refuel it.
There is rumored a follow on SR-75 but who knows?
The American Government keeps these and other ‘Black’ programs ‘secret’ from the public due to the obscene costs involved developing them.
Our so called enemies know all about them, when they fly and how fast and how high.
Report thisBy ardee, July 31, 2011 at 7:00 am Link to this comment
Outsourcing, the great plague that cripples ingenuity and creates vastly greater expense long term .....Another brick in the wall.
Report thisBy Richard_Ralph_Roehl, July 30, 2011 at 8:48 pm Link to this comment
Space program? I think not!
Amerika is going nowhere fast! First of all… Amerika’s foreign policy is delusional, violent, racist, immoral and criminally insane. It is a war mongering plutocratic $tate, a faster poo-food nation of willfully ignorant corn syrup consumer/citizens, a KKKristian/Zionist nation that can’t even manufacture its own shoes anymore.
Come on! Do you think a nation that can’t make shoes for its people is going to break into the frontiers of deep ‘espace’? Think about it. Indeed! Rome is burning… because where there is no insight, the people perish.
Report thisBy prisnersdilema, July 30, 2011 at 4:03 pm Link to this comment
The corporations that run things have decided that the space program should be
privatized, that way discoveries, and new technology can be kept secret, safe from FOIA
searches.
Secrecy and greed have destroyed and are destroying this country.
The corporations are destroying everything and everyone through their puppet agencies,
like FDA, USDA.
The same will happen to the space program. Remember that secrecy is just another
form of greed. That those the keep the secrets are responsible for the damage done,
just as those that order it.
Better a life time in prison, than an entity in hell.
Report thisBy gerard, July 30, 2011 at 3:17 pm Link to this comment
Romantic dreams of empire—but as Muroc was “blind in his right eye”, so are we all more or less lacking in vision. Hence, this air-war-borne empire called “America” is about to crash in the wastelands of mismanagement,greed and sterile authoritarianism—unless we can come up with something more humane, grounded in peaceful coexistence, as the guy said.
Report thisBy ongre11, July 30, 2011 at 12:55 pm Link to this comment
A lovely story, I remember that America. We as a people are at a very critical juncture. The corporatists and political leaders have moved on to the greener pastures of the highly populated countries like China, India and Indonesia for their “markets”. Our Children will have a very different world to live in. Those frickin’ bootstraps better be strong and smart!
Report thisBy DarthMiffy, July 30, 2011 at 12:33 pm Link to this comment
Ah, when America was great. I remember…
Report this