The New Area 51: Airplanes and rockets and experiments oh my!

The legendary Area 51 may not be a place of mysterious alien missions ... but it is certainly a place for experiments, for success and failure, joy and horror. Popular Mechanics explores the latest going-ons in the flight test fields of the Mojave Desert.

Pictured: The Proteus, created by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites

Filed under: area 51, mojave, and test flight