LEASE: Airport commission will consider tentative agreement Monday.
By Art Marroquin
STAFF WRITER
The nation's largest flying observatory and other aircraft used by NASA for scientific experiments may find a new home at LA/ Palmdale Airport under a proposal set for consideration Monday by the Los Angeles airport commission.
NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center hopes to expand its operations at Edwards Air Force Base to the small Antelope Valley airport, which could eventually be home to the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, a 747 jetliner armed with a giant telescope that gazes at the solar system.
Modified versions of the ER-2, Gulfstream III and DC-8 jetliners would also be housed at the airport to conduct earth and environmental studies, according to NASA officials.
The proposed 20-year lease would require NASA to pay more than $1.4 million annually to rent Hangar 703, a 422,000-square-foot building that once served as a home to Rockwell International and the B-1 bomber aircraft, according to a report submitted by Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that operates Palmdale Airport.
The aging hangar has stood vacant since 2003, except for when scenes from the movies "The Terminal" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" were shot there, said Paul Haney, LAWA's deputy executive director for airports and security.
LAWA has spent four years looking for a new tenant to take Rockwell's spot at Palmdale Airport, and took nearly a year to hammer out a deal with NASA, according to Alan Brown, a spokesman for the Dryden Flight Research Center.
NASA officials in Washington, D.C., have already signed off on the tentative agreement, which calls on the agency to make about $6.5 million worth of renovations to the hangar, including new laboratories and technical upgrades.
In return, LAWA will spend about $4 million on a new roof for the building.
The extra space, according to Brown, will more than double the hangar space currently available to NASA at Edwards Air Force Base.
"LAWA is very interested in getting this facility utilized and we have a need that isn't being met at Edwards, so this will be a win- win situation," Brown said. "We're very excited to get this project moving."
The new facility would also serve as a convenience to visiting scientists, who would travel only a few miles from their Palmdale hotel rooms to the airport, rather than trekking about 50 miles up to Edwards Air Force Base, Brown said.
"Let's face it, we're out in the boonies right now, so that involves a lot of commuting for scientists who are in town to conduct experiments," he said. "This will be much more convenient and beneficial to everyone involved."
