Aviation Junkyards
25 images Created 18 Jun 2012
In mid-day heat of the arid Sonoran and Arizonan deserts sit the remains of Boeing 747 airliners and military aviation Here, the fate of the world's retired airliners and fighters are decided by age or a cooling economy and are either cannibalised for still-working parts or recycled for scrap, their aluminium fuselages worth more than their sum total. After a lifetime of safe flight, wings are clipped and cockpits sliced apart by huge guillotines, cutting through their once-magnificent engineering. Picture from the 'Plane Pictures' project, a celebration of aviation aesthetics and flying culture, 100 years after the Wright brothers first 12 seconds/120 feet powered flight at Kitty Hawk,1903. Also, at a NASA Space Junk Auction, Apollo astronaut walkway structure, electronic equipment and assorted rocket parts and gantries from the Apollo era, were sorted together after the death of NASA engineer Charles Bell, whose collection of cumbersome rockets, gantries, fuel tanks and browsers lay overgrown in what had become a snake-infested wilderness. They now sit rusting awaiting scrap dealers.