Half Around The World In 80 Days

The Mojave Desert in central California is a hot, windy and barren place. However, it does have some attractions for engineer types like myself, who like to indulge our propeller-heads. My first port of call was the KJC solar power plant where I was kindly given a tour by David Rib. This is a interesting place with long parabolic mirrors ranged across a huge swathe of country. These heat a synthetic oil up to 600°F which is then used to produce steam and electricity. Mojave has more than 350 cloud-free days a year which makes it ideal for this type of power generation. Any of you who have seen the movie 'Gattaca' may recall that Uma Thurman took Eathan Hawke for a walk at dawn here; unfortunately there was no sign of Uma when I visited.

The solar collection mirrors at KJC solar power plant; no sign of Uma Thurman though.

Mojave is also ideally suited to windpower. The hills are alive with the sound of whirring wind turbines. These are sleek white colossuses whose reflections make the countryside twinkle in the bright sunlight. These generally come alive in the afternoon as the winds race downhill to the roasting desert floor. As I saw scrawled on a wall in Mojave town, 'If the wind is blowin, it must be Mojave'

Mojave wind turbines at dusk

Those wind turbines are big ! techno tourist is dwarfed by blade.

Most of you have probably not heard of Mojave before, but what is most famous for is as the landing site of the early space shuttle missions at Edward's Air Force Base. This was my final destination in Mojave along with the adjoining NASA Dryden Flight Research Centre. Lots of aircraft development is done here because of the vast salt flat where experimental planes can be crash landed. Currently they are testing the next generation space shuttle and also experimenting with solar-powered 'Helios' aircraft. It was also at Edwards Air Force Base where Chuck Yaeger first broke the sound barrier as depicted in the movie The Right Stuff

Bell X-1E aircraft flown through sound barrier by Chuck Yaeger.

Lunar landing trainer used by Apollo astronauts