Trip 14 May 2025 · Written up 14 May 2025 · Last expanded 29 September 2026
Two stops in Mountain View on the same trip out for MLSys25, neither of them on any agenda. I went to look at Waymo’s headquarters, and then at Moffett Field.
Two kinds of flight, forty years apart
Waymo is the current bet, and the one everybody argues about. Moffett Field is what the last one looks like after it has settled: an airfield, its hangars, and a stretch of ground that has been doing this since the airships. Standing at one and then the other in the same afternoon is a cheap way to get some perspective on how long these things take.
I took more photographs than notes, so I will not push it further than that today. What I have not worked out is whether the ground itself matters, since Waymo did not end up four miles from Ames by accident, any more than Ames ended up here by accident, and something about this particular valley floor keeps attracting the expensive, slow, physical bets.
Photographs
Links
Waymo, and the history of Moffett Field and Hangar One. To be added.
Open entry
This page is not finished, and is not meant to be. I add photographs, people and links as I dig them out, so it keeps growing after publication. Why the whole site works this way is on the colophon.
