Long Beach
Long Beach, CA is a major port of entry for goods imported into the US via ship. This view gives a nice perspective on the sheer scale of the operation. Note the thousands of containers used in the process. Panning slightly to the right will also show a lone Queen Mary docked next to a large shiny object I guess is a fuel storage container.
Thanks: Todd Holden, John Neilson & Joe
I think that round object near the Queen Mary is a dome that houses Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose waterplane.
See: http://www.sprucegoose.org/aircraft_artifacts/exhibits.html
The dome next to the Queen Mary was built to house the Spruce Goose – which is no longer there. See: http://www.bfi.org/domes/topTen.html
The dome is now used by Carnival Cruise Lines as thier LA Terminal. What looks like a barge is in the place where their ships tie up, just to the right of the dome.
Spruce Goose!
What is the strange white island alone to the right?
if you zoom in there is a Placemark: freaking squid or something / Google Earth
That squid thing is freaky! Also, Placemark: is this / Google Earth pollution, or just sediment being kicked up?
Actually, the object to the right of the Queen Mary is not a storage tank, but a cinesphere or similar style attraction. It was unfortunately closed when I was there in Dec. 2004
I saw the Spruce Goose there about 25 years ago. But I think that the plane is now on display somewhere in the northwest, I believe Washington. I was a pretty cool place.
The white island is an oil or natural gas drilling site.
Just plug the tables in to any PA Long Beach, CA Einstein’s the DJ
The white island is an oil island, so is the one northeast of the Queen Mary, that’s sitting at the entrance to Shoreline marina. The dome used to hold the spruce goose until about 10-15 years ago.
The dome next to the Queen Mary was built to house the Spruce Goose (H-4 Hercules). The Spruce Goose was bought by the Disney Company in 1988 and then sold to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in 1993. They disassembled it and moved it to Evergreen Aviation Museum located in McMinnville, OR where it is currently on display.
OK here’s the deal with the islands.
There are four of them, they are artificial islands with oil drilling rigs on them. They are named Grissom, White, Chaffee and Freeman after the three astronauts who died in Apollo 1, plus Theodore Freeman who was the first member of the space program to die in the line of duty (in a T-38 trainer accident).
The strange thing is that Grissom and Chaffee are there, but White and Freeman have gone missing. Compare the map view to the sat view and you will see what I am talking about. I don’t think they were “redacted” but maybe they were.
More info here:
http://www.oxy.com/oil_gas/world_ops/usa/thums.htm
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0114.shtml
The Spruce Goose was moved to Oregon in 1992:
http://www.sprucegoose.org/aircraft_artifacts/exhibits.html
Look at the prow (front) of the Queen Mary, and you will see a smaller black sliver in the water. This is the Russian submarine Scorpion, which is on display for tours.
What’s really weird about the oil islands is that from the city they look like expensive hotels. They built a resort facade around them to hide the oil equipment from the locals and tourists.