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With the space shuttle gliding into retirement, Deanne Stillman has a nice piece at Truthdig on the local origins of the U.S. space program. She's an expert on the Mojave Desert, so her story focuses on the desert's role in the history. She gives special emphasis to Lancaster.
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.
Stillman is a contributor here as well.