Vintage NASA/NACA photos

[Weaver]

Nice collection of old photos of NACA/NASA test facilities:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/17/vintage-nasa-facilities/

[pyro-manic]

These things are always fascinating. I wonder how much of it is still there? I found a site a little while back that looked at the National Gas Turbine Establishment in Pyestock. It's all due to be demolished, which I think is an absolute tragedy.

http://www.ngte.co.uk/home.htm  
http://abandonedplaces.livejournal.com/2393661.html

There's another fairly large site quite near me, at Winfrith in Dorset. It was an important research site for decades, and did a lot of work on submarines and related technologies for the MoD. It's now all but shut down, with a tiny staff (now QinetiQ of course) and most of the site has been closed. It would be very interesting to go and look at, but I suspect security would be rather tight and would frown upon a random nerd with a camera trying to climb over the fence! The Police HQ is right next door as well...

[PR19_Kit]

Holton Heath on the north bank of Poole Harbour is similar.

It used to be an MoD R&D site for things I can't mention and all the stuff was moved to Farnborough some years ago, but it still looks like a WWII research place even now. Back when I did some work for them it was like being in a time warp, everyone rode round between asbestos clad buildings on black bikes and wore white lab coats! Modern day cars parked outside the buildings looked decidedly odd.

I installed an upgrade to a very old, WWII vintage, test machine there, and we needed some parts from the old system to integrate the new hydraulics properly so they took to me to the huge shed, still visible on Google Earth to this day, and suggested I had a rummage around. It took me most of an afternoon to find the parts I needed but some of the other stuff there was astonishing, it must have dated back to the 50s at the very least, maybe even to wartime!