the plane in the picture above, seen here at nasa’s dryden flight research centre in california, is called the shuttle carrier aircraft and as you may have guessed is used to carry space shuttles (piggy-back style) should they land at this base. i mention this purely to give some sense of scale as the number 270 next to it is part of the largest compass rose on earth.

this one…




the compass has been painted on the bed of an enormous dry lake next to the research centre and measures a whopping 1.21km in diameter. according to wikipedia, ‘it is inclined to magnetic north (around 13 degrees east of true north) and is used by pilots for calibrating heading indicators’. next to the compass, also painted on the bed of the lake, are some of the longest runways on earth. you can see a couple of them in the next photo.



the size of this thing is amazing. check it out on google maps here - you can still make out the compass rose from quite a distance. also check out this page on flickr. a guy who works at the base has added some interesting notes to an aerial shot of the area.