Geography
The largest features of the 470 square miles (1,200 km2) that make up Edwards AFB are the Rogers Lake and Rosamond Lake dry lakes. These have served as emergency and scheduled landing sites for many aerospace projects including the Bell X-1, Lockheed U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, and the Space Shuttle. The lakebeds have black lines painted on it to mark seven official "runways". Also painted on the dry lake beds near Dryden is the world's largest compass rose: 2,000-foot (610 m) radius, 4,000-foot (1,200 m), 0.75 miles (1.21 km) in diameter. The Edwards AFB compass rose's magnetic eastern variance to true north is measured by Google Earth's distance/direction measurement tool as inclined to magnetic north with a 15.3 degrees east variance of true north, as opposed to the stipulated official variance of 12.9 degrees east. Other nearby airports' (KMHV, L71) compass roses are depicted with around 13 degrees east variance, in line with the expected magnetic variance for this region. The reason for the discrepancy in Edward's compass rose is not apparent. The larger lake bed, Rogers, encompasses 44 square miles (110 km2) of desert. Because of Rogers' history in the space program, it was declared a National Historic Landmark.
The Rosamond dry lake bed encompasses 21 square miles (54 km2) and is also used for emergency landings and other flight research roles. Both lake beds are some of the lowest points in the Antelope Valley and they can collect large amounts of precipitation. Desert winds whip this seasonal water around on the lakebeds and the process polishes them, yielding a new, extremely flat surface; the Rosamond lake bed was measured to have an altitude deviation of 18 inches (460 mm) over a 30,000-foot (9,100 m) length; that's about 1 millimetre (0.039 in) altitude deviation over every 20 metres (66 ft) of length.
The census-designated place encompasses an area of 44.378203 square kilometres (17.135 sq mi) of which 1,729 square metres (0.427 acre) is water.
Read more about this topic: Edwards Air Force Base
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)