When spaceflight enthusiasts think about catching a rocket launch, the first place to come to mind, more than likely, is Florida.
The Sunshine State is brimming with a near-constant schedule of crewed and uncrewed launches from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, both located on Florida’s Space Coast. Catching the sight of a SpaceX or NASA vehicle getting off the ground has become so popular among tourists, that the U.S. space agency even sells tickets for spectators.
But all the way across the U.S. on the West Coast, plenty of spaceflights are launching from California. In Santa Barbara County, a military base regularly hosts rocket launches that span the civil and commercial arenas…