The Lost America Blog

Expensive Junk

Expensive Junk  :::::  NASA Crows Landing  :::::  Launch Control Trailers  :::::  April 2013

Expensive Junk ::::: NASA Crows Landing ::::: Launch Control Trailers ::::: April 2013

Try to imagine what NASA paid to build these portable launch control and radar tracking trailers back in the 1960s.  Now they’re sitting abandoned at the closed Crows Landing NASA Airfield.  The insides of these were packed with mostly vandalized, transistor and tube-based analog electronics.  And spiders.  Lots of spiders.

It took all of the 270-second exposure to run around and add the lighting with the Protomachine flashlight.  Purple between each trailer, climbing inside (note the cinderblock on end I used as a step for the near trailer) to add the red (lets see YOU try to balance the red to cast strongly on the ground, yet not fry the inside of the trailer!), and a touch of lime in the foreground to accent the weeds.  The rest is burned in full moonlight.  It took at least 5 tries to get this right: it was a long, difficult half hour.  I was pretty sick of climbing in and out of these things by the time I was done.

One Response to “Expensive Junk”