Skip to main content
Support Provided By
Episode 4 Preview | Back to the Future
0:30
Tech billionaires choose Southern California to launch their own space companies.
Episode 3 Preview | A Space Odyssey
0:30
The race to the moon is matched in dollars by a secret military program to dominate space.
Episode 2 Preview | The Big Chill
0:30
The Cold War and Pentagon dollars fuel the explosive growth of modern Los Angeles.
Episode 1 Preview | Wings
0:30
This episode establishes Southern California as the undisputed aviation world capital.
Preview
0:30
“Blue Sky Metropolis” is the story of how aerospace was central to California’s growth.
Artist rendering of Mars Rover 2020 | NASA-JPL
Watch engineers and technicians build the next Mars Rover. Plus, send your name to space!
Two flying planes | Henry Cram
Southern California has hosted some of the biggest events in aviation and has been a hotbed of innovation in space travel since the industry’s birth. Its abundant blue skies hold aloft the American dream. We look back at some milestones from the advent of the airplane through the Second World War.
Manufacturing of Apollo 9 at Downey’s Not American Rockwell plant in 1968. | Courtesy of Columbia Memorial Space Center/ Aerospace Legacy Foundation
Once a month, Home Town Buffet becomes a meeting spot for engineers who built Apollo spacecraft.
Two workers are dwarfed by five Rocketdyne J-2 engines of the Saturn V second stage (S-II) as they make final inspections prior to a static test firing by North American Rockwell’s Space Division. | Courtesy of NASA
Southern California produced two of the three stages of the behemoth Saturn V rocket, the space vehicle that housed the astronauts during the journey to the moon.
Captain Mel Apt in a Bell X-2. | United States Air Force
Author Sharman Apt Russell writes to her deceased father, Captain Milburn Apt, who passed away testing the X-2 rocket plane.
NASA research pilot Bill Dana takes a moment to watch NASA's NB-52B cruise overhead after a research flight in the HL-10. | NASA
A new four-part documentary mini-series from acclaimed filmmaker Peter Jones showcases a century of aerospace in Southern California and explores the intersection of aerospace and Southern California from multiple perspectives.
Launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, c. 2018 | Courtesy of Space X
Triumphs and failures have been woven into Southern California’s aerospace industry since the beginning, but the risk-taking attitude and forward-thinking culture of the region continues to pull them into this historic region.
Active loading indicator