Well—and not a lot of people know this—many of our streets are not laid out for people. About forty years ago, Hennepin County designed some of Minneapolis' most prominent roads to serve as emergency landing sites for the Space Shuttle, and this influences how our infrastructure does and doesn't work to this day. In Minneapolis, there are city streets, like, say, Dupont Avenue North or 4th Street South, but most of the main thoroughfares are actually designed and maintained by Hennepin County.

I spent a lot of time rifling through the stacks and microfiche at the downtown and U of M libraries to share some knowledge about an out of this world decision that could probably use some rethinking in 2017.

In the 1970s, the Apollo program was wrapping up, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (a.k.a. NASA) was looking towards the future. In contrast with single use rockets like the Saturn V that powered Apollo, they wanted a reusable craft that could land back on Earth at the end of each mission, like an airplane. This was initially dubbed the "Space Transportation System," and would ultimately become what we know as the Space Shuttle. The rendering at the top of the page features an early concept of the shuttle.

This was a lengthy and complex project, as government ones tend to be. In the ten years or so leading up to the first shuttle launch in 1981, 14 different cities in the United States and Canada were designated as "Abort Landing Sites" for the shuttle. Compared to a conventional airplane, the Space Shuttle was fairly hard to maneuver—the thing would be going about 18,000 miles an hour (like traffic on Lyndale Avenue) at the beginning of reentry. So in the event of an emergency or miscalculation during either takeoff or landing, these Abort Landing Sites would be available if the craft was unable to return to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.