Earthwalk Day 1045 (2 December 2024), 10,741 km: NASA Ames Research Center

And that is a wrap on Leg 36. All 14 km of it.

No, it’s not the shortest leg of the tour. We’ve already had one shorter, from the Museum of Science and Industry to the Field Museum in Chicago, and I expect there will be about seven more that are also shorter (and that doesn’t count destinations under 7 km apart, which are deemed multiple destinations for a single leg).

About 11 km east of the Stanford Dish as the crow flies, but further if you’re walking, is NASA Ames Research Center. Its history goes back to 1939 as a laboratory for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, one of whose founding members, physicist Joseph Sweetman Ames, is the center’s namesake.

Ames has managed some of the US’s most significant space and astronomy missions, including the Pioneer program, whose space probes include the first two to leave the Solar System; the Kepler exoplanet discovery mission; the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA); and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS).

Ames also works on air traffic control automation and information technology, and operates some of the world’s largest wind tunnels. The United States Geological Survey’s West Coast center has recently relocated from Menlo Park to Ames.

Incidentally, the Googleplex, Google’s corporate headquarters, is basically right next door.

You need an official NASA ID to enter Ames. I entered virtually, so my virtual ID was adequate. From Ames I continued north and then south around the end of the Moffett Field runway, about 5 km altogether, ending up at a point right by the Lockheed Martin facility. Leg 37 is on.

November was, well, November. As usual for November, distance per day was down significantly from the previous months, mainly because I did only three bike rides. (Judging from the forecast, I’ll be luckly to get that many in this month. Definitely none for the first ten days of December.) Average daily steps were up slightly, mainly because I did only three bike rides, meaning I walked more days than in October. There was no snow accumulation at my house in November, but a few inches this morning, so the low distance months definitely are upon us. Fortunately the destinations are closer together for the next while. Not as close as the Dish to Ames, but closer than they’ve been.

A map showing my progress is here, a spreadsheet with progress detail is here, and a Google Earth KMZ file is in this Google Drive folder. Present coordinates: 37.416°N, 122.037°W.