Space Shuttle Endeaveour

Today the Space Shuttle Endeavour landed at Edwards Air Force Base. Since Edwards is not very far from where we are camped at in Acton we decided to try and get a look at it.

We drove to the gate at Edwards AFB. There are planes outside the gates at Edwards, sort of like at Point Mugu. There are signs describing the planes, which is clearly meant for the general public.

Jets outside the base gates.

I really like this picture that Patty took, kinda artsy! You can see the sign that describes the plane.

Great picture!

There were probably several hundred people waiting for the shuttle to appear. About 15 minutes before the expected landing time, an MP showed up and declared that we were all trespassing on base property and needed to leave!

The poor guy was trying to disperse 200 people and children who were there just to see a piece of history. I nicely asked him, "wasn't this the general public viewing area"? We were outside the base gates. The road was a California road, not a military road. He said we needed to move 14 miles down the road. That would have put us on the other side of highway 14! The poor guy was just doing his job, but he didn't have the law on his side, nor was anyone paying attention! :)  To be fair, it didn't seem like he wanted to be doing it, and he didn't overreact!

We just moved away from him and waited for the shuttle to arrive. 

Here it comes!!!

Coming right at us!

It was cool how it was piggy backed on the 747! It started to bank and made a big circle.

Starting to bank

It made a big circle and then started to land. If you look closely you can see the white chase plane. There were also some f18 in front of it.

Continuing the circle before landing.

From our vantage point you could not see the actual landing. This is the last we could see before it dipped below the small hills.

Shuttle Endeavour

This was really cool. Tomorrow at 7:30 it is taking off again and flying over the Palmdale and Lancaster before flying up to San Francisco and Sacramento. It will then fly back down to LAX. It is scheduled to fly at only 1500 feet. We plan to drive in to Palmdale to watch it again.

That's it for today,

God Bless you all!

Brian and Patty