I left the balloons of Sorocco and headed west for my next stop.
It was two days after Thanksgiving, and Christmas was in the air...
"VLA" stands for Very Large Array.
It's a radio telescope made up of 27 huge antenna dishes like this one.
Each one is 81 feet in diameter and weighs 200 tons.
All the dishes move simultaneously and point at things in outer space.
The dishes are layed out in a Y-shape pattern, each axis 13 miles long.
For example, if the VLA Control Room was at the In-N-Out Burger by Universal Studios here in L.A., the dishes would spread out as far as the runways at LAX, "Puppy Palace" in Granada Hills, and the Baskin Robbins in Pasadena.
They move the dishes in and out from the center to focus on nearer and farther stars and galaxies.
This specially-designed train car drives to each dish and lifts it up off it's pedastels.
It pulls the dish back to their complicated 90-degree track switch, then drives it to the next pedastal.
The pedestal mounts have outlets for power built into them, so the dish just pulls up, plugs in, and turns on.
Much of the movie "Contact" was filmed here. The movie starred Jodie Foster and was based on a novel by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.
Every couple of years they pull a dish in for repairs and refurbishment.
They have a special garage just for that.
Near the control center is a monument celebrating 20 years of work at the VLA.
The VLA bathrooms have very special VLA tiles on the walls.
After that tour, KITT and I had an appetite for deadly science. So we burned rubber for the birthplace of the Atomic Bomb!