003 Your Boyfriend's No Rocket Scientist, Part 2

Valley of Smoke

We've been in space for over fifty years, but it still requires enormous resources and risk to get there. As part of the quest to change that situation, Mojave, California–the small desert town with an oversized airfield–has evolved from a training ground for Marine flying aces to the first private spaceport in history, although it's been a decade since the last succesful round-trip. While the private companies based there struggle to make acheiving orbit routine, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, located in an arroyo at the edge of Pasadena, continue refining and operating the robots that are exploring outer space.

This is the mostly-stand-alone second part of a two-part series on the history of aerospace in Southern California. The first part (episode 001) features personal glimpses of the 20th Century's aviation history in Los Angeles County; how the industry built the Southland, and how the Southland was the epicenter for the industry.