In the high desert of California.

About an hour north of Los Angeles, where the sky meets an ancient lakebed.

Our nation's brightest looked to the stars.

And wondered.

In the time since, humanity learned to fly faster than sound, reached for space, and continues to push the boundaries of what's possible.

Here History was made, and it's here that the future will be forged.

This is the Aerospace Valley where science fiction becomes science fact.

In the high desert of Southern California.

Inventors, scientists, engineers and visionaries came for the cloudless days.

Privacy from prying eyes and the miraculously hard and flat expanse of Rogers dry Lake.

This area, known as Aerospace Valley, was the hub of the golden age of manned flight tests popularized by Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff.

This area has seen milestones like testing America's first jet.

The breaking of the sound barrier.

Rocket plane, flights to the edge of space, and the first glide flights of the Space Shuttle.

The Aerospace Valley remains a hub of developmental flight tests to this day.

For all the same reasons, the skill and the spirit of all those who have participated in this incredible body of work shaped both the modern world and the American persona.

Much of this historic work is not known to the world outside of the Navy, and much of what is known is surrounded by myth and legend.

Because of the secret nature of the work the fabled Lockheed Martin skunkworks, Northrop Grumman, NASA Armstrong, Boeing, Pratt and Whitney, J.T.

4, Virgin Galactic, Stratolaunch, Scaled Composites, and countless other aerospace companies test in this airspace for the same reasons.

The Air Force Test Pilot School and the National Test Pilot School train the next generation of flight test engineers and test pilots to continue this work.

The Aerospace Valley has been the epicenter of the flight test universe for over 100 years.

Flight tests exist to deliver safe and effective products to the customer.

That could be a airline.

You know you want to have a safe aircraft to haul people from point A to point B, or a military.

You want to have a machine that can operate safely and also accomplish specific missions with efficiency and effectiveness.

Every aircraft in the Air Force inventory will one day make a stop through Edwards.

The developmental testing, as well as the operational testing portion of an aircraft's lifecycle, ensures that the United States Air Force get a product that is ready to use.

Edwards Air Force Base is the center of the aerospace test universe.

Everything that gets fuel to the warfighter in the Air Force most likely goes through Edwards Air Force Base to test.

The reason we do flight tests is because even with the best modeling, even with the best computers, we always discover something when we take an aircraft or an air vehicle airborne for the first time.

So really, in addition to validating those models and verifying the requirements, we're also making sure that the aircraft is as safe as possible and built with the highest quality.

What is fundamentally important in flight tests is that we are taking steps forward.

Anytime you do something new, there are inherent risks involved because you haven't done it before.

And that's fundamentally what Flight Test is all about.

Is how do you expand the envelope of the known and the possible in a way that is safe and productive?

Flight test gives us an opportunity to prove the product that we've developed and designed and made for our customer.

It also gives us an opportunity to identify any problems that we want to resolve before we go into production.

So when you're testing new things, it's really common for very bad things to happen.

You know, flight test has a long history of being a fairly dangerous profession.

Fortunately, it's gotten a lot safer in the last 20 or 30 years, but there's still a fair amount of hazards there, because you never really know what's going to happen when you're doing something for the first time.

We are, by definition, going to push boundaries, taking airplanes and new systems to places that they have never been before.

Whether it's because we're upgrading them or because it's the first time the airplane has ever flown.

Flight test is a team sport by definition.

Often times things are designed and they may not work as well as they do on the drawing board henceforth.

The Air Force brings those items here to Edwards, where we have over 300 days of outstanding flying weather.

Aircraft have evolved from requiring a lot of manual piloting skills to a lot more automation, and that automation has been responsible for the positive, impact on flight safety today.

If we had the safety record in the commercial airline world that we had back in the 1950s and 60s, we would be losing a 747 worth of passengers every week.

The safety that we have today, where we really haven't had a U.S.

flag carrier accident since 2014, is really primarily due to automation and a lot of advances in that direction.

Here in the Aerospace Valley, we all are amazed by the engineers and this pilot on a new platform.

It is exciting, but I think it's also excited the work we do to extend the life of our defense system here at Edwards.

I take pride in our work, and being part of this country's defense system makes it challenging at times, but really rewarding and makes coming to work a pleasure every single day.

This place on earth is the beating heart of flight test.

It's a concentration of aerospace expertise where people take science and theory, turn it into hardware.

Figure out how to fly it and how to fly it safely.

Welcome to hangar 1600.

This is the center of the aerospace universe, and you have walked into your hangar.

Edwards Air Force Base.

If you want to put a fence all the way around it, it would be larger than Washington, DC.

We have over 301,000 acres of real estate to test, and if that were not enough, we happened to sit with a lot of our industry partners and we all work in a collaborative and coordinated fashion.

Here at Edwards, we have a unique relationship with the military and all the contractors coordinating together on individual projects.

For example, in the case with Pratt and Whitney, what would typically happen in the process of developing an engine is we we get a request for a propulsion system and then we'll design, will build, and we'll enter into developmental test, and we'll develop that engine and it'll transition into flight test.

And at that point, it's where it becomes our job to keep a developmental test engine in a flight test aircraft with a constrained supply system and unique components.

These collaborative partnerships are vital in helping to ensure that what we're doing at Edwards lines up with the fiscal constraints that we have.

Obviously, the orders of the president of the United States and our congressional leaders, but as well as the end user, the pilots and the maintainers who are going to utilize these aircraft, 5, 10, 20, 30 and in the case of our venerable B-52 behind me, even from 1961 to today.

So here in the Aerospace Valley, we.

Also do commercial airplanes.

Testing.

When we have a new airframe come out, for instance, and we have to run through FAA certifications, a lot of that testing occurs here in the Aerospace Valley because we have this huge national resource at Edwards with the dry lakebed, the long runways.

So a lot of the select testing for all airframe, 737, 777 occurs here at Edwards.

80% of what we do here in the Antelope Valley, otherwise known as the Aerospace Valley, is all classified doing flight test on advanced programs.

So while I really can't go into the specifics of what we are working on, what we are doing is important for both defense as well as civil aviation.

The reason Lockheed Martin chose this specific location in Palmdale is one we're in close proximity to Edwards Air Force Base, the center for Test Excellence for the Air Force.

Additionally, the environment that Southern California offers is you know, clear skies a majority period of the time.

So we don't have to worry about weather, which is an important factor when we're talking about taking aircraft airborne for the first time.

The biggest advantage of our operations here in Mojave is the weather.

We have 350 flying days a year very few days of rain, very little snow.

It's a rare occasion and the airspace is just fantastic.

We have the same access as the Air Force and the Navy to the airspace locally here, and it's a perfect place for flight test.

That was actually one of the major considerations for why scaled Composites is based in Mojave, because there is essentially nothing here, right?

We are also in close proximity to two military ranges that we leverage for our flight test programs.

The Mojave Air and Space Port has an interesting mission.

It was originally a World War Two training facility.

George H.W.

Bush got his gunnery training in the aircraft that he flew in World War Two here at Mojave.

Post Korea War.

The airport sat dormant for years until the late 1970s, when it was taken over by Kern County to become a world class and one of the only civilian flight test facilities in the nation.

Mojave has a couple of great features location, location, location, is what I like to tell people, but we are not only located in the middle of nowhere where people will not complain about the noise and the weird things that we do out here, but the seclusion also grants some of our tenants the opportunity to test and develop without having a bunch of eyes on what they're doing.

But more importantly, this airport underlies the R2508 complex, which is associated with Edwards Air Force Base and China Lake Naval Air Station.

So above us right now, we have a lot of air space to do flight testing, including high speed corridors.

The advantage is military high speed corridors have no speed limits, especially over land.

Any civilian flight test corridor in the United States, there's a speed limit to Mach one because of the sonic boom, which is considered to be noise, which is considered to be, generally speaking, a health hazard.

We don't have that issue here in Mojave, and we are right underneath these two high speed corridors, which positions us perfectly for the future of supersonic and hypersonic flight tests.

In order to understand what the future of human flight holds, we need to go back in time to the early days of rocket testing.

Situated near Muroc Army Airfield with proximity to key testing facilities, major defense manufacturers in Los Angeles, and the federally owned land.

The remote site was perfect for the noise, explosions, and potentially toxic nature of the propellants.

Lumen Ridge proved to be the ideal location for the new centralized testing facility.

From those great granite slabs, the Rocket Lab was born, a testament to the innovative spirit of the visionaries like Goddard and von Karman, whose groundbreaking work laid the foundation for the advancements in rocketry that continue to shape our world today.

The early life at the lab was rustic and rural, almost like settlers making their way west in the days of old.

There were no paved roads or signs.

During this time, military personnel traveling to the site would choose a Joshua Tree on the other side of Roger's dry lakebed and drive across the hard packed, barren landscape to arrive at the lab.

Personnel lived in tar paper shacks because they were easy to construct until proper housing was built.

Everyone worked around the clock because they were dedicated to winning the space race and testing the F-1 engine.

During that time, the lab led engine efforts for the Apollo and Saturn missions.

The lab constructed unique facilities designed specifically for NASA, including test stands for the powerful F-1 engine used on the Saturn Five rocket.

The Saturn five, a heavy lift vehicle, stood 363ft tall and launched humans to the moon.

In the following generation of space missions.

NASA's space shuttle program, born from the Rocket Lab's efforts, became a beacon of space exploration.

The fleet of space shuttles iconic and design achieved numerous space milestones, opening the door of the cosmos to more people than ever before.

All of the space shuttles were built right here in the Aerospace Valley.

The enterprise was the first Space Shuttle orbiter constructed for NASA.

It was built in the mid 1970s and was originally planned to be named the Constitution.

However, in 1976, President Gerald Ford received hundreds of thousands of letters from Star Trek fans urging that the first shuttle be named enterprise after the iconic starship from the series.

NASA agreed, and the name was officially changed.

The enterprise was designed as a test vehicle, not for spaceflight.

Its primary purpose was to conduct critical approach and landing tests to verify the shuttle's design, aerodynamics, and handling characteristics.

Enterprise conducted a series of important ground and flight tests between 1977 and 1979.

For over 30 years, the Space Shuttle program stood as one of the most important chapters in the history of space exploration, carrying a total of 355 astronauts into space.

As the 1980s continued to unfold, AFRLs Rocket Lab expanded its horizons into satellite systems and space technology programs.

The once dedicated F-1 engine test stands found a new purpose in this new era, contributing to the advanced development of heavy lift vehicles, which played a crucial role in launching U.S.

spy early warning and communication satellites.

Different F-1 stands were also modified to test missile interceptors to defend against ballistic missiles.

The advent of communications satellites during this period transformed global communications.

These satellites facilitated instant, reliable communications across vast distances, connecting people worldwide in unprecedented ways.

Weather satellites, like those launched through the Delta four program play a crucial role in our daily lives.

These satellites complement ground instruments, offering a global observational view that enhance the accuracy of important weather predictions.

Today, we stand on the threshold of a new era in aerospace development and space travel.

From reusable rockets and advanced propulsion systems to next generation spacecraft and lunar habitats, how can we make spaceflight more accessible and affordable?

What role will private companies play and the new space race, and what will it take to establish a permanent human presence on other worlds?

As we look into the future, the Rocket Lab stands as a beacon of innovation and progress.

Its relentless pursuit of safer, more efficient propulsion technologies is not just shaping our journey through space, but also charting a path towards a more sustainable and secure future.

Combined with technological advancements brought forth by surrounding private companies, the entities that comprise the Aerospace Valley are pushing the boundaries of what's next.

One of the biggest initiatives happening in aerospace right now is primarily green operations, friendly to the environment type stuff.

With that, you have these electric vertical takeoff and landing evtol aircraft that are being developed.

There are several hundred in development right now.

Joby is transforming passenger transportation.

We are building and developing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, which we are planning on using as a passenger service for commercial use.

You can think of it as a much more quieter, cleaner and cheaper helicopter with zero emissions.

A much more environmentally friendly and faster way of going from point A to point B. Aerospace is always interested in pushing the envelope in any way possible.

We want to try to grow and learn.

What I love about this business is our entire objective is to be a little bit better tomorrow than we were today.

You know, never be satisfied with where you are and always figure out how can we improve this a bit more.

So you'll see in the next ten years, evolutionary and revolutionary technology both appear simultaneously.

Today, we're experimenting and developing numerous systems to end up and next generation aircraft, helping to figure out how to continue the incredible mobility of people to move around the world.

So the aerospace of propulsion is, it's almost hard to wrap your head around.

If you look at where we started and where we've arrived.

The the advancement has been so fast, so rapid, long term future.

Perhaps there's no bigger discussions happening than in the field of hypersonic travel.

With speeds in excess of five times at the speed of sound or Mach five.

The emerging field of hypersonic systems holds untold value for humankind.

We're involved early in the testing and development of Hypersonics, which is about a suite of technologies that will affect how we are transported in the future.

These innovations include the technologies that we are developing with Hypersonics, the materials that we design, the aerodynamics that we use, structures and even data and analysis tools.

So all of those things that we're working on now are all a part of the modernization of the B-52 that will move us well into the 2050s.

While this technology is already making headway in military applications, the long term value of Hypersonics is in the field of human transportation, with the possibility of traversing vast distances in a fraction of what is possible today.

Imagine this being able to transport.

People or things.

Halfway around the world in an hour or an hour and a half.

Hypersonic speeds changes the mobility.

It changes the transportation game immensely.

Lockheed Martin and NASA are using the X 59 to demonstrate this technology.

Once it's proven, we'll then hand that over to the rest of civil aviation, and that's going to allow further development and civil transport and making people's lives easier.

Getting from coast to coast, much faster manners.

If you were to get up to around 100,000ft, you start running into very low resistance.

So now it takes a lot to get up there.

But once you get up into the upper atmosphere, takes very little to fly around.

Your efficiency level goes way up.

So the future of rocket technology, where we're going is going to be explosive rockets creating a rotational explosion.

So it's sending an explosion and it sends another, another.

And so all of these combined and what that's going to eventually give us is a single stage to orbit.

Right now you need to have multiple things happen.

You've got to carry all this massive fuel.

Your rockets have to be really big in the future if they get the explosive rocket.

Now it's kind of like the difference between a almost a rocket and a jet, where you'll have explosive rocket technology that will give you more than ten times the efficiency.

And so if you took a commercial vehicle up to 100,000ft and had a efficient way of propelling it, now you're going from the United States to Europe in 45 minutes, an hour.

In ten years and aerospace in space, we're going to be seeing a significant increase in unmanned platforms.

Doesn't mean that people aren't involved in every step of the way.

And that's a huge misnomer.

I'll say when you talk unmanned, it requires just different kinds of disciplines and skill sets than you've seen for traditional manned aircraft.

We're not going to replace manned aircraft by any means, but that teaming, having manned aircraft, flying with unmanned aircraft both in the air and then eventually moving into and through space, is going to be a fascinating development.

Were on the brink of having the capabilities to actually go out and make life multi-planetary to go to Mars.

This is now no longer, you know, science fiction.

It is completely in the realm of possible.

The Polaris Dawn mission that will launch this year will take us farther away from Earth.

Since the last time we walked on the moon.

Two of our crew members will be the women that will venture the farthest from Earth ever.

We will test out a new spacesuit.

Because when we get to the moon or Mars, we're going to probably get outside of our spaceship and actually do some work and do some exploration.

We'll test a new form of communication over laser link two Starlink satellites, so that we can reduce the dependency on kind of legacy communication assets that get stretched really thin when you have, you know, a dozen people in space, let alone the hundreds or thousands we want to go to at some point.

The technology that SpaceX is using for their rockets is very similar to the technology that we've used in the past.

But the real difference is that the Falcon nine is designed for multiple use reusability.

I think the current rockets, we're up to around 18 times that a booster has been reused, which is a whole different paradigm for rocket engines.

Rocket engines were only built for single use, and they were thrown away.

And then you'd build another one for the next mission.

But the paradigm that SpaceX has set up is revolutionary, which is, hey, we're not going to have a one time use thing.

We're going to recycle, rockets and, use them over and over again.

So we're going to fly Polaris Dawn and we're going to do another mission, Polaris two, which is going to bridge us ultimately to Polaris three, which is Starship.

And again, that's your fully reusable spacecraft, the first and second stage.

That is what is going to bring the cost down to such an extent that we can launch potentially hundreds, like literally an armada of spaceships, you know, to Mars, and you're going to need them because you're going to need an awful lot of infrastructure there in order to mine the propellant that you're going to need to come home from Mars.

But to build out an actual civilization there with Starship coming online and, and that cost to access orbit coming down so materially, you are going to be able to go up and figure out what that space economy is, what that purpose should be.

And the future of rocketry is going to develop in new and exciting ways we can't even possibly imagine.

Today.

As we go out into the solar system with humans.

We are doing exactly what test pilots do take hardware to new places and figure out what it's capable of doing.

And then they do incredible missions.

And that's just where we are with Artemis.

NASA's first program to send humans back to the moon in more than 50 years.

The story of American rocketry is one of determination, ingenuity, and relentless pursuit of the unknown.

This integrated ecosystem, where Boeing test aircraft using Northrop structures and Pratt and Whitney engines, where international students learn alongside Air Force pilots, where startups like Joby work beside century old companies, where AI meets human intuition, where commercial space ventures partner with military programs.

This is the true power of the Aerospace Valley.

The future we once imagined in science fiction is becoming reality.

Through the collaborative efforts of these dedicated professionals.

As we continue to push the boundaries of what's possible, the Aerospace Valley remains the place where humanity's greatest aerospace achievements take flight not through individual effort alone, but through the unprecedented collaboration of minds, companies and nations working toward a common goal.

Reaching for the stars.

We realize that the so-called sound barrier really restricted us going any faster.

And once we got the F-1 above the speed of sound then smoked on out to mach two and then beyond, we realized, hey, this opens up the whole universe for us.