Several rows of dormant aircraft bake in the yellow basin, kept behind a heavily monitored section of the Mojave Air & Space Port. When a commercial jet airliner expires, its final destination is an airport like Mojave. 

The Boeing 737s idling in the sun, like the wind farms that rotate on hillsides close by, have become a familiar landmark in this shoulder of the Mojave Desert.

A 3,300-acre research center for aerospace, Mojave is not a commercial airport — even though logos for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Japan Airlines and Lufthansa poke out from the prickly brush.

There are currently 100 or so defunct aircraft parked on the California chaparral. The port’s operations team manages some of them but most of the boneyard is overseen by a third-party company that requested privacy.

The boneyard serves various functions — rapper Lil Pump filmed an outrageous music video there a few years ago — but the aircraft themselves are the stars. Sometimes Hollywood calls on Mojave for wrecked airplanes, and you may have seen their work exploding at LAX in 1994’s “Speed” or marooned on a beach in Hawaii for ABC’s “Lost.”

A nonprofit organization called Big Imagination once used Mojave to convert a Boeing 747 into a “moving art experience” for Burning Man.

Most of the time, the Boeings are stripped for parts, either for recycling or an entirely new purpose. Arielle Sewell, the port’s director of operations, said she purchased an aircraft’s elevator to refashion into a dining room table for her home.

“There are thousands of parts in an aircraft,” she said. “One of them is still good.”

In approaching the junked vessels, tremendous in size like a brachiosaurus from “Jurassic Park,” the mood is surprisingly eerie. 

“It feels like a place that’s slightly off,” Sewell said. “The rest of the airport is noisy, but the boneyard is silent, besides creaking in the wind. There’s a 700-pound machine above my head and it’s starting to crack on wooden stilts.”

A mishmash of debris, including a collection of white nose cones once stuck on the front of fuselages, are now scattered in the dirt. When an airliner’s body is stripped, exposing its innards to the desert, the remains resemble a honeycomb.

California is home to another airport boneyard, the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville is about 90 minutes away, and similar reclamation facilities are dotted across the Southwest. 

However, Mojave’s boneyard, located in unincorporated Kern County some 90 miles north of Los Angeles, shares space with the first inland space port to ever receive a designation from the Federal Aviation Administration. 

Only a fraction of the Mojave Air & Space Port is a cemetery — the rest of the campus is an aviation incubator. And has been for nearly a century. 

Following World War II, Mojave started offering aerospace and aviation business with a specialized testing ground. The port’s entrance off Highway 58 features a trophy aircraft previously used to test the Space Shuttle’s wheel and brake system. It’s also home to the revolutionary Stargazer L-1011 carrier, which was the first aircraft to privately rocket satellites into orbit. 

The name “stargazer” is an homage to “Star Trek,” and in the series, of all the settlements in the galaxy, Starfleet captain Christopher Pike was born in Mojave next door.

Although the port maintains a wealthy legacy, its leadership today is intent on pushing boundaries. Sewell said there are about 100 tenants working there today, using the 12,500-foot runway and 20,000 square miles of surrounding airspace to test their creations. 

“We do here what you can’t do elsewhere,” Sewell said. “This is a proving ground for the newest concepts. What limits can we push?”

Due to the proximity to town and civilians, Mojave is a horizontal, not vertical, space sport. Tenants can test rockets and components, but they cannot blast upwards.

Some of the more recognizable names in aerospace work out of Mojave — Virgin Galactic is a tenant — while upstarts like Universal Hydrogen utilize the premises to expand the frontier of aviation; its airplanes run principally on hydrogen. 

To attract customers, Mojove promotes its unique benefits. The port bills itself as “free of bureaucratic red tape” to give businesses a sandbox for flight test research and development. “With the Federal Aviation Administration approval … critical regulatory barriers have been shattered. So you can execute your dreams,” the port boasts in a promotional video. 

Mojave is fertile for entrepreneurialism, but the forefront of innovation isn’t immune to tragedy. An accidental blast in 2007 killed three employees for the company Scaled Composites, and injured others. Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson was at Mojave in 2014 to mourn a test pilot who died after a prototype craft for space tourism crashed. 

Sticking up into the air as a tribute to error, Mojave showcases a rotary rocket on its campus from the bankrupt Rotary Rocket Company. The port wrote that it’s a reminder to “pursue your dreams without fear of failure.”

Sewell said that the site prepares for emergencies by frequently drilling scenarios and limiting access to sensitive areas — which is in part why the boneyard is off limits for the public.

While explaining the port’s emergency planning, Sewell’s walkie-talkie was suddenly abuzz. A call came through from the control tower that a plane had just crashed on the tarmac. She dashed to the runway. 

Arriving at the scene, two Mojave airport firefighters were helping a solo pilot out of his twin engine Cessna that just skidded across the tarmac. The pilot was unharmed and managed to crawl out on his own volition. 

The aircraft nose-dived onto the runway going 100 mph and left behind a faint trail of white smudge. The pilot told first responders that the front landing gears weren’t working and, after circling the port a couple of times, he skillfully landed the Cessna by force. 

He was now on the phone with his insurance company while the firefighters discussed methods for towing away the aircraft.

As she assessed the wreck, Sewell said she knew exactly where the Cessna was headed. 

It was bound for the boneyard.