An Illustrated History of Aviation in Southern California (Part IV)
Relive the excitement of man’s first steps on the moon and the long journey it took to get there with 20 new hours of out of this world programming on PBS SoCal’s “Summer of Space" Watch out for “American Experience: Chasing the Moon” and "Blue Sky Metropolis," four one-hour episodes that examine Southern California’s role in the history of aviation and aerospace.
As the Cold War fizzled out, military spending cuts and a newfound awareness of the environmental impact of the aviation and aerospace industries all but ended the seemingly endless production of military planes in California. Giants of the industry merged to stay afloat or left California entirely. At the same time, Hollywood and the entertainment industry eclipsed aerospace as the main industry in Southern California.
Yet, less than a decade after the USSR dissolved, work on an International Space station began, broadening the collaboration that earth’s scientists could do in space, and commercial satellites were positioned for the next global revolution, the Internet. In a century and some change since the Wright Brothers first flew over the dunes at Kitty Hawk, mankind proved that the sky was not the limit it once imagined. What shall we discover in the next century?
TRANSCRIPT
1985 Rockwell B-1B Lancer bomber starts serving the U.S. Air Force
1989 First flight of Northrop B-2 bomber
1989 Space Shuttle launches Magellan probe to Venus; Galileo to Jupiter
1989 Berlin Wall falls
1991 USSR collapses
1995 American astronauts visit Russian Mir space station
1997 Mars Pathfinder lands first rover on Mars
1998 International Space Station under construction in orbit
2000s GPS, satellite TV, cell phones boost commercial satellite market
2002 Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk founds SpaceX
2003 Space Shuttle Columbia and crew lost during re-entry
2004 Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne win first Ansari X Prize
2011 Last launch of Space Shuttle
2012 Shuttle Endeavour arrives in LA, on display at California Science Center
See previous timeline from 1960 to 1986. Click here.
See how Southern California’s aerospace industry is reborn in the new century on "Blue Sky Metropolis" S1 E4: Back to the Future: A New Space Age Dawns in Southern California. Watch now.
