There has long been a close aerospace research partnership between NASA (and it’s forebear, the N.A.C.A.) and the U.S. military. This association is perhaps best exemplified by their co-located facilities in California’s Mojave Desert centered around what was once known as Muroc Dry Lake Bed (now known as Rogers Dry Lake) an ancient, long-evaporated lake, with an extremely flat and hard-packed floor; it was perfect terrain for a natural runway of extreme length. Muroc was where many of America’s first experimental jet and rocket planes took flight, including the Bell XS-1, the rocket-plane which first broke the speed of sound back in October, 1947. Back then, most people simply referred to the place as Muroc… it was a deeply inhospitable location; arid, dusty, and bleached incessantly by the searing heat of the sun during much of the year (and icy cold without it). There were no amenities to speak of either, during those early days, so no one but the hardiest and most daring of pilots would want a posting to Muroc. Today, of course, the facility is encompassed within the massive Edwards Air Force Base, the world’s premiere aerospace testing facility. As intimated earlier, NASA has a strong presence at Edwards AFB. It’s Armstrong Flight Research Center has a fleet of diverse airframes, many of them on bailment from the U.S. military, to conduct a variety of research aims, for both civilian and military-oriented cutting-edge projects.