Finally, the final journey of the last space shuttle ever built, Endeavor, and its giant orange external tank are expected to begin this month - capping a historic journey to an ambitious museum exhibit in Los Angeles.
It will be a momentous occasion for the California Science Center, the state museum just south of downtown LA that is building the 20-story Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center to house Endeavor. Anticipation for the new museum wing has been building for more than a decade, following NASA's 2011 decision to send Endeavor to LA and the orbiter's cross-country trip in 2012, during which it flew over the Hollywood sign before taking a three-day journey through the city streets. to his new home.
Unlike any other exhibit showcasing a retired space shuttle, Endeavor in LA will be configured in a full-stack setup, pointing toward the stars, as if ready for launch.
Barring any weather delays, the 20,000-kilogram, 45-meter-long giant orange external tank is expected to be moved starting next week and then lifted from its current horizontal position to a vertical position, where it will be attached to the solid rocket boosters already in place are installed.
Then, no sooner than the end of the month, the space shuttle orbiter itself, Endeavor, will be lifted from its horizontal position to its vertical position and attached to the external tank. It will be the first time a shuttle designed for space has been mounted vertically outside a NASA or Air Force facility.
The operation will be a sight to behold and the key moments of lifting the external tank and Endeavor will be streamed online by the California Science Center. The cranes that will lift the spacecraft are quite large; the tallest will be about as high as City Hall.
"Show Time!" said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center.
The prelude to the external tank's big lift is scheduled for Jan. 10, when it will be moved by self-driving modular transporters - similar to the ones used to move the Endeavor through city streets in 2012 - along State Drive to the new museum wing. construction site. The journey takes about two hours, passing the science center and the Exposition Park Rose Garden.
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The external tank must then be lifted on the evening of January 11 and the following morning, sometime after 10 p.m. Because the move will take place outdoors, any significant wind could cause delays to the big move. The museum does not want something very large to swing from a crane in strong winds.
"The trend, at least in December, was for the wind to die down around 10pm and pick up again around 4am. Assuming this continues into early January, we will try to take advantage of that six-hour window to top up the tank lift it and take it to the well," said Dennis Jenkins, project director of the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.
Initially, two cranes will be used to lift the external tank from its horizontal position. Then the external tank is slowly placed upright in a vertical direction and one of the taps is disconnected. The other crane will then hoist the tank to its final position.
The external tank will then be attached to components installed in recent months - the twin solid rocket boosters, which were installed in a months-long process that began in the summer. At takeoff, the white rocket boosters were placed under the shuttle's wings and produced more than 80% of the lift.
Read more: A successful launch: Space Shuttle Endeavor's rockets have been installed
The 15-story orange external tank, the last of its kind in existence, arrived in Los Angeles in 2016, traveling by sea through the Panama Canal and to Marina del Rey, before also trudging through the streets to the Science Center. During launches, the external tank carried propellants - liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen - that powered the space shuttle's three main engines to put the shuttle into orbit.
After the external tank is in place, work will begin to move Endeavor from its existing display space, the temporary hangar known as the Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavor Pavilion, where the orbiter was on display for about 11 years, until he closed. on New Year's Eve.
The hangar is being dismantled to make way for Endeavour's relocation. Later this month, the Endeavor will be moved from the hangar on the western edge of the science center, Rudolph said.
It will first be rolled onto the lawn just north of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and south of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
The orbiter will then descend State Drive. The move will be difficult: at some point the Endeavor will have to be jacked (to avoid hitting a building) and then jacked again for the remainder of the journey.
Weather permitting, Endeavor will undertake a private lift to its site before the end of the month. Hopefully that lift will also be a nighttime operation.
Once Endeavor is installed, the rest of the museum will be built around it, followed by the time it takes to install the exhibits. It may take a few years before the new museum is open to the public.
The shuttle project, estimated to cost $400 million, will reshape the skyline around the California Science Center, whose roots date back 110 years as a venue for showcasing agricultural and industrial projects. The site became the California Museum of Science and Industry in 1951 and reopened in 1998 as the California Science Center.
The new wing of the air and space museum is named after Samuel Oschin, the late Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist whose name also appears on the planetarium at the Griffith Observatory and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center cancer institute. The financial contributions from Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Oschin Family Foundation have had a huge impact on the construction of the new museum wing, which broke ground in mid-2022.
The space shuttle's arrival in California was a homecoming for the Endeavor, which rolled off the Rockwell International production line in Palmdale in 1991, replacing the Challenger, which exploded shortly after launch in 1986, killing the seven on board. Southern California played a crucial role in the development of the shuttles, which pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy and became a source of pride for the region's aerospace industry.
Endeavor flew 25 missions in space before its last flight in 2011, eight years after another shuttle, Columbia, disintegrated on its return in 2003 and the shuttle fleet was retired.
One of Endeavor's most notable missions was successfully repairing the Hubble Space Telescope and helping complete construction of the International Space Station.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
