Ad Astra

Like the backdrop for a post-apocalyptic science fiction movie, the rusting hulks of the Coca Test Stands loom 10 stories tall above the ancient stones and chaparral at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the mountains adjacent to the Santa Monica Mountains. The Apollo and Shuttle mission rocket engines were test fired here before launching their payloads and the dreams of a nation into space. The future of this site is uncertain, but there is a strong push to make at least part of the now defunct field laboratory into a National Monument, and to transform the rest of the 2850-acre site, which is critical habitat for everything from horned lizards to mountain lions, into parkland. Photo © 2015 S. Guldimann

The fence we walked between the years

Did balance us serene;

It was a place half in the sky where

In the green of leaf and promising of peach

We’d reach our hands to touch and almost touch the sky,

If we could reach and touch, we said,

‘Twould teach us, not to, never to be dead.

We ached, and almost touched that stuff;

Our reach was never quite enough.

If only we had taller been,

And touched God’s cuff, His hem,

We would not have to go with them

Who’ve gone before,

Who, short as we, stood tall as they could stand

And hoped by stretching tall to keep their land,

Their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul.

But they, like us, were standing in a hole.

O, Thomas, will a race one day stand really tall

Across the void, across the universe and all?

And, measured out with rocket fire,

At last put Adam’s finger forth

As on the Sistine Ceiling,

And God’s hand come down the other way

To measure man and find him good,

And gift him with forever’s day?

I work for that.

Short man, large dream.
I send my rockets forth between my ears,

Hoping an inch of good is worth a pound of years.

Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal mall:

We’ve reached Alpha Centauri!

We’re tall, O God, we’re tall!

—Ray Bradbury, If Only We Had Taller Been, written on the arrival of Mariner 9 to Mars, 1971

The NASA test stands at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory are a tangible monument to the vision of the future that held wonders like the massive space station in this 1970s NASA artist visualization. It's the future we still haven't managed to achieve, but if we are not tall enough yet to reach the stars, the research conducted in our own backyard enabled us to touch the moon. Image: NASA Ames Research Center

Once upon a time, we were promised a different future, a bright, optimistic tomorrow, one with space stations and rockets bound for the final frontier. Instead, we inherited a post-modern world of wars and woes, but the ghost of that future, of mankind’s quest to reach the stars, still haunts the Los Angeles mountains and there’s a campaign to prevent it from being forgotten.

Before they moved to Malibu, my parents lived in the San Fernando Valley, not far from Rocketdyne’s Santa Susanna Field Laboratory. My mother still remembers how the sky turned orange and the ground shook when NASA was testing the rocket engines that would transport the Mercury and Apollo missions into space. 

Although Rocketdyne built the facility and Boeing currently owns it and is overseeing the decommissioning and decontamination of the site—a formidable undertaking, NASA still administers about 450 acres of the 2850-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory, including the area with the rocket test sites. Here's an archival photo of a rocket test from the 1960s, borrowed from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Work Group website.

The field laboratory, also known as "the Hill," was built in 1947 by Rocketdyne, a division of North American Aviation. Today the site is an island of open space in a sea of mass development that stretches from the Simi Valley to the San Fernando Valley, but in the 1940s the mountaintop was remote and isolated. Liquid propellant rocket engine testing began at the SSFL in the late 1940s for the U.S. space program. Elements of almost every U.S. space project in the 20th century—from Mercury to the so-called "Star Wars Initiative"—were tested or developed in part at the laboratory. 

Workers position rocket engines at one of the test stands in this archival NASA photo.

There was a darker side to the research that went on up the mountain: contamination. From the early 1950s until 1980, as many as 10 low-power nuclear reactors were developed by the U.S. Department of Energy and operated at the site, which was also used for liquid metals research. 

An experimental liquid sodium nuclear reactor experienced a partial meltdown in 1959, spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere. It was the first of several reactor incidents.

Fuel from an estimated 30,000 rock tests and the chemicals used to flush the rocket engines have also contaminated the soil and the groundwater. Disposal techniques in the 1950s and '60s involved blowing things up or burning them in open pits—not one of the more forward-thinking approaches to highly toxic and potentially deadly industrial waste. 

According to the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel, over its lifetime, Area IV of SSFL was home to: "ten reactors, numerous “critical” facilities (a kind of low-power reactor), a plutonium fuel fabrication facility, a uranium carbide fuel fabrication facility, a “hot lab” (purportedly the largest in the country) for remotely cutting up irradiated nuclear fuel shipped in from around the country from other AEC/DOE nuclear facilities, and a sodium burn pit, in which sodium-coated objects were burned in open-air pits."

A map of Area IV showing the location of nuclear research areas, from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Work Group website.

The report also states that at least four of the reactors suffered accidents and that radioactively and chemically contaminated items that were not supposed to be burned were burned there for decades, "causing extensive contamination of soil and groundwater and offsite migration in surface water runoff," and that "the accident history of the site is poorly understood, given the limited amount of disclosure that has occurred to date."

This building, one of just a few left in Area IV, was reportedly used for processing liquid sodium for the sodium reactors. 

There's no way of knowing the extent of the impact in the community and to the workers who were exposed on site. One thing we do know is that people died as a result of that contamination and that thousands were exposed to an elevated risk of cancer. Lawsuits have been filed. The debate still rages and there are no easy solutions or answers.

Boeing acquired the facility—and 50 years of environmental contamination at the site—in 1996. The debate over clean up is ongoing, but it would be doubly tragic if the cleanup process eradicates the site's history. 

This U.S. Department of Energy photo shows the Energy Technology Engineering Center in 1990. This is Area IV, where most of the nuclear reactors were built and radioactive materials like uranium were stored and processed. Image: Wikipedia

This is Area IV today. The most severely contaminated structures have been entirely removed, although there are still reportedly isolated areas with elevated levels of radiation, including some in the nearby rock formations. Workers in this area have to wear radiation badges and be monitored, and it would probably not be a good idea to stop for a picnic and a nap, but we were assured that it's safe enough for visitors.

The clean-up process has proved complex and controversial. Some activists are calling for complete remediation, which would require removing vast quantities of soil and rock, potentially including archaeological sites and all of the remaining NASA structures. 

At the other end of the spectrum are preservationists who hope to see the NASA portions of the site, where the rocket engines for Mercury, Apollo and the Space Shuttle program were tested, preserved as a National Monument. This would entail cleaning the site to contamination levels safe for parkgoers, but not to "residential" levels.

The archaeological record reveals that for as much as eight thousand years, the Santa Susana Mountains were a sacred gathering place for the Chumash peoples and their ancestors. Long before Rocketdyne, NASA and Boeing appeared on the scene, the original residents of this remarkable place also  watched the stars. In addition to being one of the best-preserved rock art sites in North America, the Burro Flats Painted Cave is aligned to the winter solstice. This is still an important sacred site for the Chumash people and is off-limits to all visitors. The photo shown here is from the #SSFLNationalMonument campaign, and shows just a portion of the rock art.

Further complicating the clean up debate is an ancient and spectacular Chumash ceremonial site, which is a priceless cultural resource for the descendants of the Chumash, including the Santa Inez Band of Chumash, who are actively involved in the fight to preserve the cultural heritage of the site. The Burro Flats Painted Cave is on the National Register of Historic Places, and there is a move to seek UNESCO World Heritage status for the site. It's that important and significant.

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the American Nuclear Society also recognize portions of the lab site as historically significant. It's unlikely that there is another place on earth with such a remarkable combination of historic significance.

It may not look like much, but that two-story building is where they processed and stored reactor cores. We were told that the shed next to it contains a deep cellar built into the bedrock and lined with aluminum. The self-contained nuclear reactors that powered the early satellites were tested there, with the help of a massive suction pump that sucked the air out of the chamber to simulate the vacuum of space. 

The ultimate goal is to make the 2850-acre SSFL site into open space—it's a vital wildlife corridor and a key section of the proposed Rim of the Valley Corridor, but how much of what is there now—space race artifacts, Chumash legacy, habitat that includes massive rock formations and unspoiled oak woodland, in addition to the pervasive contamination, is still being debated.

When I was invited to tour the lab with other members of the local media by the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation recently, friends and family teased that I would leave the experience glowing in the dark. I knew that the worst surface contamination has already been mopped up to levels that are safe for visitors and the employees that currently work at the site—Rocketdyne is long gone and the facility is currently operated by Boeing—but I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I found was something breathtakingly beautiful and profoundly sad.

I never found out what was stored in this huge hilltop tank, but it would be right at home on the cover of a sci fi paperback from the 1950s

I shared some of my experiences in an article for the Malibu Surfside News on the role of the local mountains in the development of space age technology, available here. The focus of that article was Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, where the laser and the atomic clock that led to GPS technology were developed in the 1960s, and the TRW satellite research facility at what is now Solstice Canyon Park.

These sites, together with the Santa Susana Field Laboratory and JPL in Pasadena, have the potential to all be included in the Rim of the Valley if the most inclusive plan—Option D—is approved. While JPL and HRL are still active research labs, they represent, together with the TRW site and the SSFL a significant chapter of American history that should be recognized and preserved.

I was able to include a quick mention of the campaign to make the SSFL into a space age historical monument, but there wasn't room for an in depth look at all the astonishing things I saw in the Santa Susana Mountains, which is why I’m glad to be able to share them here. 

The whole SSFL site is an odd juxtaposition of natural beauty and industrial development. The main parking area has a backdrop straight out of Arizona Highways. After a quick briefing on safety and history, we took our places on the bus for our tour. Most of the images in this blog post were shot through the window, but we did have opportunity to stop for a closer look at the two of the NASA rocket test sites.

This could be some quiet remote corner of the Eastern Sierra, instead of being at the edge one of the most densely populated parts of California...

...At least until you get a closer look at some of the industrial installations. Instead of mundane things like butane or water, these tanks once held rocket fuel for NASA's Alpha and Bravo test stands.

And then the first test stands come into view. These are the Alpha Stands, where the Mercury rocket engines were tested. It's like suddenly finding yourself on Tatooine, only this is science fact, not science fiction.

Here's what it looked like when tests were taking place. This is a photo of photos of rocket engines being test fired at Alpha Stands. The images are on display at the site to give visitors a feel for the history of the place.

This thing is enormous, it towers six stories overhead, and extends deep down into the canyon. We were told by our guide that the deep canyons enabled multiple activities to take place without the tests interfering with each other.

Everything was analog. Someone on the tour pointed out that a single smartphone probably has more computing power than the entire lunar landing program had at its disposal. 

We had special permission from NASA to visit the Coca Test Stands, which are even bigger and more impressive than the earlier Alpha stands. The Space Shuttle rocket engines and the Delta II rockets that carried the Apollo missions to the moon were tested here.

The scale of this place is overwhelmingly vast.

Flames and steam would have poured out of that vent during a test, but rust is already eroding this two-foot-thick slab of metal and signs of decay are everywhere. 

Many of the buildings at Area IV, where high levels of radioactive contamination were identified by the Department of Energy in 1989, have been removed so completely that no visible trace remains, but critics of the clean-up effort say the damage runs deep. The 2006 report by the independent Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel found that "Safety considerations appear to have been subordinated to other interests from the outset." Ultimately, in a weird way, the contamination at the site may end up protecting it from becoming yet another overdeveloped suburb. 

The Santa Susanna Field Laboratory is critical wildlife habitat and open space; it's an ancient historic and sacred Chumash cultural resource that is part of the cultural heritage of the Chumash people who made Malibu their home; it's a monument to the American space race; and also a reminder that technology comes at a cost, and that is something that is critically important, as well.

Nature is already at work dissolving metal and breaking up concrete. In time—lots of time—even the radioactive elements will break down. In addition to becoming a monument to the space race and a world heritage site for its cultural treasure, the Santa Susanna Field Lab could be the first major U.S. Park to recognize the impact of industrialization on the environment and the lives it cost as something that needs to be remembered. It's a chance to learn from the past and apply what we learn to the future.

A petition requesting that President Obama designate the Santa Susana Field Laboratory a National Monument has received more than 1200 signatures and has already attracted the attention of NASA. More information on the campaign can be found here. 

“It’s two cultures reaching for the stars across time,” LVHF President Kim Lamorie told me on the tour, quoting preservation activist Don Wallace. “It’s phenomenal to have all of this history right here.” 

While it seems far removed from Malibu, the Santa Susana Mountains are really just next door as the proverbial crow flies and they are a key wildlife corridor that enables species like Malibu's mountain lions to maintain genetic diversity by dispersing from one mountain range to another. Preserving the entire 2850-acre field laboratory site as open space is critically important for the survival of wildlife but also for the good of the people of California.

Visitors explore NASA's Alpha test stands where rockets that sent some of the first humans into space were tested in the 1950s and '60s, while in the background, the stones of the mountains hold evidence of ancient astronomers, who also watched the sky and dreamed thousands of years ago.

Creating a Santa Susanna National Historic Monument would honor the Chumash people whose culture came so perilously close to extinction in the 20th century but is now experiencing a resurgence; it would honor those who lost their lives in the effort to reach the stars; and it would honor the work and effort that it took to get us to the moon, and help to make amends for the mess that was created as a consequence of that journey.

It's a tangible expression of Bradbury's "inch of good that's worth the pound of years," and if he were here he would have wanted to see this place preserved for the future, the one we haven't seen yet, the one that we all dream will be full of marvels.

Suzanne Guldimann

5 August 2015

The view across the Santa Susana Field Lab's undeveloped "buffer zone" of rolling hills, rock formations and oak trees  offers a glimpse of what almost all of the San Fernando Valley looked like less than a century ago. This place is rare and remarkable and worth preserving for future generations and as a record of the past, both bad and good. Ad astra, per aspera—to the stars through hardship.

Sunset 2014

A December sunset transforms water and air to fire and gold at Malibu's Westward Beach. 2014 was an amazing year for sunsets. All Photos © 2014 Suzanne Guldimann. All rights reserved.

In November, I reported on a talk by environmental artist Lita Albuquerque for the Malibu Surfside News. The talk was the third Malibu Salon Series event, sponsored by the Malibu Cultural Arts Commission. This was a rare opportunity to meet with a remarkable artist and visit her studio. You can read the article here. One of the things the artist said that continues to resinate in my imagination is:

"This place is interesting. The thing about Malibu is it faces south.”

Albuquerque explained that she views Malibu as a sort of natural solar and lunar observatory, enabling the observer to track the path of the sun and moon across the sky throughout the course of the year.

She suggested that Malibu residents who spend time outside observing nature develop an almost instinctive understanding of the annual path of the sun and moon across the summer and winter skies.

This NOAA graphic illustrates the angle of earth at the time of the winter solstice.

It's certainly true that the Chumash, Malibu's first residents, had a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy and the annual solar cycle. For the Chumash, as with so many other cultures around the world, the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the turning point when the days begin once again to lengthen, was an important occasion. Ethnographic records indicate that the moment of the solstice was observed with the aid of  a carefully prepared wooden pole that was used as a solar observatory. The arrival of the moment of the solstice was accompanied by ceremony. 

The solstices and the equinoxes are still observed each year at the Wishtoyo Chumash demonstration village at Nicholas Beach—the ceremony reconstructed by contemporary Chumash elders and led each year by Chumash activist Mati Waiya. The event's organizers didn't respond to this reporter's request to cover the ceremony this year. However, the Malibu Times was invited and has good coverage of the event.

The website solarplots.info features this graphic representation of the angle of the winter sun. It's easy to forget just how far the sun "travels" away from due west and due east during the year. 

There is evidence that Point Dume, which faces due south, was once an important Chumash shrine site. Today, it is still a fine place to mark the solstice and to track the path of the sun across the sky throughout the year.

On the winter solstice—3:03 p.m. on December 21 this year, the sun reached its most southerly declination, which means that the North Pole is angled away from the sun to the farthest extent possible, -23.5 degrees. 

For the Malibu observer, the sun at midwinter appears to rise south of due north—over Palos Verdes, instead of Los Angeles, and sets south of due west, over the open ocean. Although there is the potential for spectacular sunsets throughout the year, winter skies are often the most beautiful. The fact that the mountains aren't in the way as they are in summer when the sun sets farther north, is a contributing factor, so is the low angle of the sun, but the most important ingredient for a good sunset is clouds. There has to be enough cloud cover to catch the sun but not so much that the clouds swallow the light.

Sometimes weeks or even months go by without the slightest glimmer of celestial fire. May gray and June gloom are not conducive to sunsets: when there's too much cloud cover the day simply fades into darkness. But at any time of the year, when conditions are right, the sky is transformed into flame and glory.

This year seems to have have provided a surprising number of spectacular sunsets, or maybe  I was just fortunate to be in the right place to see them. At any rate, as the sun sets on 2014, here's a look at the past 12 months of sunsets.

Wet sand is transformed into a mirror that reflects the mother-of-pearl colors of the sky at Zuma Beach. January 2014 brought some of the most spectacular sunsets I've ever seen. It was hard to select just one image, but this one seemed to best capture the etherial beauty. 

The setting sun breaks through the clouds of a February storm, turning the sea to liquid gold and revealing the Channel Islands, a mysterious vision that evokes the myth of Bali Hai or the Garden of the Hesperides far in the west, where the golden apples of the sun grow, nurtured by the daughters of night.

The aftermath of a March storm brings powerful surf and a sunset the color known as ashes-of-roses. 

By early April, the sun has moved halfway to the mountains in the north. 

In May, as we approach the summer solstice, the sky watcher at Westward Beach sees the sun set behind the mountains.

The Summer solstice—the longest day of the year—occurs around June 21, but its rare to see a good sunset during what is often Malibu's grayest month. I photographed this sunset on July 7 at Sycamore Cove, looking towards Point Mugu. It seems to exemplify the quality of the light we experience in June, when the sun may only appear for a few minutes in the afternoon.

A Mexican monsoon brings brilliant colors to this late July sunset at Westward Beach. Although the summer is only half over, the sun has already begun to move back towards the south.

We had a whole succession of unusually spectacular skies this summer, thanks to a series of powerful Mexican storms that also brought big surf to the Southern California coast. This was a surprisingly rainy and humid August sunset at Paramount Ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Here's another August sunset. If you compare the location of the sun in this photo with the April sunset photo, you can see exactly how far the sun has "moved" to the north during the course of the summer. 

September's sunsets often include the eerie lights of the squid boats off shore. This is the scene from County Line on a cloudless September evening.

Depending on where the clouds are, sometimes the sunset colors appear in the east rather than the west. This strange and enchanting October sunset at Westward Beach occurred the evening before Halloween. The mysterious white dome on the top of the cliff is an amazing private observatory that is part of a Cliffside Drive house.

We had Westward Beach to ourselves for this windswept, opal-colored November sunset.

December again, and a sunset on the beach at Ventura that evokes Homer's "wind-dark sea." 

The secret to catching a good sunset is simple: you have to make the time to go out and look for it. Any westward-facing location with an unobstructed view will do, but whenever conditions look promising, we try to head for the beach.  Zuma or Westward are marvelous places to watch the sun set. Other good local public sunset viewing places in Malibu are Bluffs Park, Nicholas and County Line beaches, Leo Carrillo's North Beach, and Point Mugu. 

Here at the Malibu Post we find its always worth the effort. Even if the sunset doesn't materialize, it's an opportunity to look at the sky and the ocean, listen to the waves, and to breathe.  Sometimes we see dolphins or whales or sea lions. It's always a time for meditation and reflection, and sometimes we are rewarded with dazzling colors that grow more and more intense until they fade into darkness.

Whatever 2015 brings for you, dear reader, I hope it includes time to watch for sunsets.

Happy New Year!

Suzanne Guldimann

30 December 2014

Catch a Shooting Star: The 2013 Geminid Meteor Shower

Skywatchers gather at Zuma Beach as the sun sets and the planet Venus—the evening star— shines bright. Western Malibu, with its dark skies and stable marine air, should offer good viewing for the Geminid meteor shower on December 13-14, weather permitting. © 2013 Suzanne Guldimann

The last major meteor shower of 2013 arrives in Malibu’s night sky December 13-14, and it may be the year’s best, if the weather cooperates. Skywatchers will have a chance to see meteors any time after sunset until dawn, but the best viewing will be in the early hours of the morning, after the waxing gibbous moon has set at around 4 a.m. and before sunrise.

Malibuites, contending with summer fog, don't often get a good look at the August Perseid Meteor Shower, but the Geminids arrive during the darkest, clearest night skies of the year and often offer a spectacular show.

Even diminished by moonlight this year, the Geminids are expected to peak at around 100-120 meteors per hour. Earth will continue to move through the field of meteor material until Dec. 17, when our planet moves out of the field. Skywatchers could potentially see a shooting star or two or three any night this week.

Geminid meteors are often bright and comparatively slow moving. The shower often includes bolides—brilliant "fireballs." Even an inexpensive digital camera can capture a good image of the shower, but a tripod is essential. 

The Geminid shower gets its name from the constellation Gemini, where the meteors appear to originate. Caster and Pollux, stars named for the mythological twin brothers of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, are the brightest stars in the constellation. It's easy to find the twins by looking to the left of Orion, the most conspicuous constellation in the winter sky. The radiant—origin point—of the shower is right above the twins, but meteors should be visible across much of the sky.

This image of Gemini is from H.A. Rey's wonderful astronomy guide, Find the Constellations, one of the best resources for easy star identification.  Only Caster and Pollux, the "eyes" of the twins, are bright stars, but the constellation is easy to find to the left of Orion, the most conspicuous winter constellation. Just look for Rey's stick figures in figure 4, above. Rey, who created "Curious George," authored a second astronomy guide called "The Stars." Both books were written for children but are helpful for astronomy enthusiasts of all ages.

According to NASA, the Geminids are fragments of debris from an object known as 3200 Phaethon. Most named meteor showers originate from cometary debris and many have been observed by humans for centuries. The Geminids were first recorded in the 1830s. Early reports noted approximately 20 meteors per hour, according to historical documents. Meteor rates have increased dramatically over the years. Today, the Geminids are one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year. 

NASA Astronomers are still debating the nature of 3200 Phaethon, described in a 2010 NASA article as “inexplicable.” 

"The Geminids are my favorite because they defy explanation," said Bill Cooke, lead for NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. "Of all the debris streams Earth passes through every year, the Geminids are by far the most massive. When we add up the amount of dust in the Geminid stream, it outweighs other streams by factors of 5 to 500."

According to the article, current theories on the origins of 3200 Phaethon range from a lump of rock possibly broken off from a larger asteroid, to an extinct comet. Curiously, when the object is at perihelion—the point in its orbit that is closest to the sun—it appears to exhibit comet-like brightness. 

NASA is hosting a live webchat from 11 p.m.-3 a.m. for meteor watchers who have questions or would like to learn more.

Skywatchers hoping to catch a shooting star should pick a dark, unobstructed viewing location. Lawn chairs, blankets and hot drinks make the experience more comfortable and festive, but just a clear view of the night sky is all that is required to catch a glimpse of this celestial festival of lights. 

I saw a star slide down the sky,

Blinding the north as it went by,

Too lovely to be bought or sold,

Too burning and too quick to hold,

Good only to make wishes on

And then forever to be gone.

—Sara Teasdate

A bolide, or fire ball, blazes across the sky in this NASA photo.