ROB AYLING: The world's first commercial spaceport

Rob Ayling is an old friend of mine. Due to unexpected circumstances, he finds himself wandering about the west coast of America with a few days to spare. "Can I send in some reports for the bloggo on anything interesting I find?" he asked. "Hell yeah" I said...

I was 50 miles from Baistow before the sat nav kicked in . . .Looking for the fabled Aeroplane Graveyard. There it was right by Highway 14. To the untrained eye it just looks like an airport with a lot of planes. But in the middle of a desert.

With the aide of a 400mm lens you start to see that these planes are here because its their last port of call. All around the airfield are parts, one compound is full of landing gear, another 7 jets exactly the same, but only their bodies, no wings.

This place isn't creepy or anything. Its just not what you would expect to find in the middle of nowhere. The end of the working days for this aircraft. Yet, it is also the birth place of commercial space travel.

This is where SpaceShipOne was based when it won the fabled X-Prize. There is a little memorial towards that competition. That is what these shots are of. As you can imagine photography is limited round this facility. Stood there, you feel that you are part of something. Even though NASA manned space flights aren't happening, the next step forward started here.