The Moffett Field hangar has always loomed, far in the background throughout my childhood. I remember taking some sort of Thanksgiving Day walk-a-thon around it in third grade.
The first time I saw the Ames campus again up-close last year, I felt what most people must feel upon visiting:
NASA had become a relic of decades past, of a time when most of the world thought that living on the Moon and beyond was within our lifetime.
The present condition of this place reflects how we have forgotten that space age dream. Barracks have been abandoned wholesale, broken windows and all. An empty bowling alley still stands with its debris and gutted interior behind locked doors.
But over time I’ve found that though it appears barren at first, it’s actually quite a thriving place with its own cycles and small community rhythm. Like the desert. Or something.
There’s a constant stream of cars in and out of the front gate, students from CMU and Singularity University walking and biking around, a community pool with mid-day lane swimmers. Abandoned Google bikes litter the landscape. Standing in line at the Moffett Field postal store, I saw that the army personnel stationed here had developed a friendly banter with the clerk.
Maybe it is an illusion that I’ve romanticized Moffett Field as a small town, transplanted from the Mid-West into noisy Silicon Valley. Or maybe the NASA gates have actually preserved an open space and normality that the region has lost over the past 20 years. I left the Bay Area for 12 years and when I returned, found that my hometown had turned into LA. Except less cool.
Google recently leased a fair amount of Moffett Field including Hangar One, pledging to inject millions of dollars to restore it. While I know the field will be better off with a moneyed facelift, I wanted to capture some of what Moffett Field looks like today in the last of its pre-Google era.
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Liz Khoo is a Product Designer working on responsive energy intelligence at Verdigris, a startup on NASA Ames Campus. She captured these scenes of Moffett Field on a roll of old 35mm film with a Nikon EM.
Absurdist features profound writings by odd luminaries. Submit your essays to getabsurdist@gmail.com.
