Edwards Air Force Base

Not to be confused with Ellington Air Force Base.

The Edwards Air Force Base is a US Air Force^W installation in California near Lancaster^W, at the edge of the Rogers Dry Lake^W.

General information[]

Edwards hosts the Air Force Test Center^W and the Air Force Test Pilot School^W, and many more Air Force facilities. It has over a dozen runways, most of them on the lakebed of the dry lake next to the base. The USAF Plant 42 near Palmdale is about 37 km southwest and is operated as a component of the Edwards Air Force Base.

Edwards AFB is also a landing site for NASA's Space Shuttles, and the home of NASA's Flight Research Center (FRC).

NASA Flight Research Center[]

The NASA Flight Research Center (FRC)^{[BTS 1]} is an aeronautical research center operated by NASA and located inside Edwards Air Force Base. NASA is also using the base as one of their two main Space Shuttle landing sites, beside the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The airbase's immense lakebeds and its proximity to Plant 42, where the shuttles are serviced before relaunch, were important factors in its selection. Shuttles that land in Edwards are transported back to KSC mounted on NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.

In the early years of the Apollo program, the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV), a test vehicle to simulate Moon landings with the Apollo LEM, were used by the FRC to study and analyze piloting techniques needed to fly and land the Lunar Module in the Moon's airless environment. After acceptance by NASA, they were transferred to the Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, where they were later replaced by an improved version, the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV). The test vehicles were also called "the flying bedstead".

History[]

On May 21, 1983, Margo Madison asked Nelson Bradford to allow the Space Shuttle Kon-Tiki to land in Edwards and maybe free up some polar launches from Vandenberg, since NASA had shuttles double-parked at Edwards at that time and the Air Force would have free capacity.^[1]

In 1995, the shuttle Endeavour was avaiting transport to KSC in Edwards after returning from Jamestown mission 228.^[2]

Behind the scenes[]

↑ In the real world, since 2014, the center's name is Armstrong Flight Research Center, honoring Neil Armstrong^W, who was a former test pilot at the center. Former names of the center were Muroc Flight Test Unit (1946), NACA High-Speed Flight Research Station (1949), NACA High-Speed Flight Station (1954), NASA High-Speed Flight Station (1958), NASA Flight Research Center (1959), and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (1974).
In the TV show, it is only ever referred to as "Edwards", so the actual name of the facility in the For All Mankind timeline is unknown.