Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Shuttle Landing Draws Big Crowd : Space: Fans and first-timers flock to witness what may be the last Columbia touchdown in Southern California until 1995.

It drops out of the sky like a brick. And in the best of conditions you might get to count your view of it in minutes rather than seconds.

But there they were, up before the sun, the fanatics and the first-timers. Equipped with blankets, chairs and cameras, about 35,000 people braved the desert chill Monday morning to watch the space shuttle Columbia return to Earth after a 14-day mission.

Several records were set during the mission, including the longest flight in the history of the shuttle program and the first animal dissection in space. Yet it was not those records that drew hordes of people to this air base on the edge of the Mojave Desert.

Instead it was an opportunity to see a Southern California shuttle landing, perhaps the last until 1995.

Like many people, Maureen Reeve said she, her husband and four children came to NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards AFB on Monday to watch Columbia land because it’s “probably the last one for who knows how long.”

Pauline Weiss and Will Poole have lived in a small town next to Edwards AFB for four years but never before took the time to watch an orbiter touch down. Monday morning they were among the privileged. With VIP passes secured from a relative who works at NASA, the couple stood on the roof of a Dryden building for a bird’s-eye view of the 7:06 a.m. touchdown.

Spectators in RVs, some who had come from as far as Washington and Arizona, began arriving at Edwards AFB on Sunday. Early Monday thousands of cars streamed in, backing up traffic as far as a mile from the base’s heaviest traveled west entrance gate.

Because of road construction near the shuttle viewing site, spectators were allowed access to NASA’s hillside viewing area, an area normally reserved for invited guests.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” said Yorba Linda resident George Lawson, who watched his first shuttle landing with his wife from atop his RV. “If you see it a second time that’s something the good Lord gives you.”

Watching Columbia land brought tears to the eyes of Bob and Jan Baxter, Washington residents. “To think we can send people out like that and then bring them back to one little spot on Earth, it makes you feel good about where you live,” Bob Baxter said.

Charles Wiggins and Toni Moore consider themselves groupies. They drove with two friends from Tucson, the third time they’ve done so. They left Sunday and headed back home Monday.

“People in space, it’s something that’s special to our generation,” Moore said.

Dedicated shuttle watchers Dick Adams and Bill Heeding expected Monday’s landing--each has seen six landings--to be the best yet. Yet despite their whistles and yelps as the orbiter came into view, when it was all over they conceded that the rising sun combined with the shuttle’s entry angle made for less-than-optimum viewing.

For years Adams’ wife, Harriet, shook her head at her husband’s 300-mile round-trip jaunts from their Lake Elsinore home to Edwards AFB. On Monday, having come along on the journey for the first time, Harriet had a new perspective.

“I’m impressed,” she said moments after Columbia glided to a stop on the distant runway. “It was worth getting up at 2 a.m.”

For Dick Adams and Heeding, both who wore jackets emblazoned with NASA patches, it was just one more mission accomplished.

“Anything to do with anything off this planet we love,” Heeding said.

Both men are disappointed that none of the nine shuttle missions planned for 1994 is scheduled to land at Edwards AFB. “If they wouldn’t have fixed the brakes they’d all be landing here,” Adams quipped.

First-time shuttle watcher Peggy Havens, an Apple Valley resident, was so impressed with what she saw, she asked, “Now how do we get a ride on it?”