This is a slightly different version of a story we first prepared for The Points Guy site. All images courtesy Ted Heutter

In “Waiting for Spaceships: Scenes from a Desert Community in Love with the Space Shuttle,” photographer Ted Huetter documents the thousands of people who would gather to welcome home the space shuttles on their return to Earth.

For thirty years – from April 12, 1982, to July 21, 2011 – these were the five orbiters that flew in space for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Space Transportation System (STS), or space shuttle, program. (A sixth space shuttle, Enterprise, was a test vehicle that didn’t go into space).

As NASA proudly notes, the space shuttles flew 135 missions and not only repeatedly carried people into orbit, but they also “launched, recovered and repaired satellites, conducted cutting-edge research and built the largest structure in space, the International Space Station.”

While all the space shuttle missions took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, more than 50 of those missions landed in the Mojave Desert at Edwards Air Force Base in California, about 100 miles from Los Angeles.

And, as photographer Ted Huetter documents in Waiting for Spaceships: Scenes from a Desert Community in Love with the Space Shuttle, thousands of people would gather to welcome the space shuttles on their return to Earth.

“Some spectators came because they had helped build the shuttles,” while many viewers came from greater Los Angeles and “adventurous retirees from around the country made Florida to California treks in the recreational vehicles, bookending the trips with the shuttle launch and landing,” Huetter writes.

But he also notes, “The only snag was that they had to watch [the landings] from a harsh patch of desert about three miles from the runway.”

To accommodate the enthusiastic and dedicated spectators, a day before each scheduled shuttle landing the Air Force would open an authorized viewing site where people could set up camp.

At that remote site, the military directed traffic and supplied tanks of potable water, portable sanitary facilities, generators, streetlights, a first aid station, and a command post, Huetter reports, “but generally kept a low profile and a friendly presence.”

Huetter was working in Los Angeles and made the trek to the desert to camp with the shuttle aficionados for eight of the space shuttle landings during the 1980s, beginning with STS-4, the fourth mission for the Space Shuttle Columbia, which landed at Edwards Air Force Base on Independence Day, July 4, 1982. STS-4 was also the fourth shuttle shuttle mission overall and the final test flight before the program was deemed officially operational.

“I was there as a fan like most of the people at the public landing site, to experience some spaceflight history,” in person instead of watching it on TV, said Huetter.

For each shuttle landing adventure, Huetter packed his camera gear along with his camping gear. And the photographs he took during those trips not only document a unique slice of the space age but also of the viewing site and of the people who gravitated to it year after year.

His images, taken with film in the pre-digital camera era, show the landing runways, but also the diverse range of RVs and tents, the food and souvenir vendors and the diversity of people waiting, mingling, enjoying themselves, and, finally, welcoming the shuttles home. His selected shots are organized to create a composite of twenty-four hours at the campsite, from the arrival of the first campers to the touchdown of the shuttles.

Here’s where you can see the retired Space Shuttles

Space Shuttle Atlantis is at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Merrit Island, Florida, where the vehicle is displayed in flight, along with dozens of interactive exhibits about the history, technology and impact of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program.

Space Shuttle Discovery is on view at the National Air & Space Museum’s Steven Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.

Space Shuttle Endeavour is at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, California but is off view while construction of a 200,000-square-foot addition to the main building is underway.

Space Shuttle Enterprise, NASA’s prototype orbiter, is at the Intrepid Museum in New York City.

Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff on January 28, 1986. Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated returning to Earth on February 1, 2003.

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