Dawn, Waiting for Endeavour. NASA Ames Moffett Airfield, California. September 21, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early crowds at dawn, lining up to view the space shuttle Endeavour fly over the NASA/Ames Moffett Field facility

I’ve posted enough photographs of the space shuttle Endeavour on its flyover of the NASA Ames Moffett Field – here is a photograph of some of the people who showed up to see the event. The place opened its gates at 6:00 a.m., which is well before sunrise in California at this time of year. I left home at about that time and took public transit, arriving just about the time of sunrise. I joined the growing throng arriving at Moffett. Quite a few came by car, but many also came on foot, walking from the nearby light rail stations or from their cars that they had parked in nearby Mountain View.

Once on the base the decisions were pretty straightforward – to stop of breakfast, coffee and souvenirs or to head straight out to the edge of the runway to take up a position hours in advance of the flyover. I made a quick stop for coffee, but decided to forego souvenirs and the available food-truck breakfasts (as good as they looked), and headed straight out onto the runway. There was a crowd already near the entrance area, but much of the runway was still open, especially further down toward the old Hangar One, where I found a position right along the barricades next to the runway. For the next few hours, people mostly hung out – talking, making photographs, checking cell phones, and so on – as the sun rose and the anticipate built. The photograph shows a small portion of the crowd right near sunrise, when the shadows were still long and most people had not yet arrived. The skeleton of the historic Hangar One is at the far left.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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