![]() ![]() When Endeavour was rolled into its pavilion at the end of a three-day road trip in October 2012, it was mounted atop four friction-pendulum seismic isolators. is a pile of rubble," Dennis Jenkins, director of the science center's project to display Endeavour and a former NASA space shuttle engineer, said in an interview with collectSPACE.Ī lot of research and technology stands behind Jenkins' answer, providing the confidence for he and his team to go forward with stacking the towering display. "Suffice it to say that the building and Endeavour will be standing when L.A. Now, as the California Science Center takes the first steps to stack the vehicle with a pair of twin solid rocket boosters and an external fuel tank for a vertical, launchpad-like permanent exhibit inside the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, the question has only increased in magnitude. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.- Even before it opened more than a decade ago, the exhibit of NASA's retired space shuttle Endeavour in Los Angeles has elicited one question perhaps more than any other - can it survive an earthquake?Īnd to think, that was while the winged orbiter was displayed near the ground in its horizontal, landing configuration. After that date, it could be years before Endeavour will again be available for up-close viewing by museum guests.Ģ023 Los Angeles Times. Since Endeavour's arrival in 2012, the orbiter has been on display in the temporary Samuel Oschin Pavilion, essentially a warehouse, where it has been viewed over the last decade, and where it will be shown until Dec. to permanently feature a trio of surviving shuttles that have seen spaceflight. The new museum wing has been anticipated since 2011 when NASA chose the science center as one of only three museums in the U.S. It'll be the only space shuttle exhibit nationwide to depict the spacecraft as if it were at the launchpad, ready for takeoff. Once it's complete, the $400-million Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will rise 20 stories tall. The rest of the museum will then be built around it. Cranes-the tallest of which will be about the height of City Hall-will raise Endeavour from its horizontal position to point vertically to the stars for its final display. The full assembly of the boosters will set the stage for installation of the orange external tank, which will occur no earlier than early January.įinally, the installation of the Endeavour orbiter will occur no earlier than the last week of January. The museum must assemble scaffolding for that installation to take place. Once the solid rocket motors are installed, the final piece to complete the solid rocket boosters are the tips-the so-called forward assembly, including the nose cones and forward skirts. If it doesn't, then every pin takes some banging and pounding to get the pin in," Rudolph said. "If everything, as they lower it in and put it in, aligns really well, the pins basically slide right in. Each pin is 1 inch in diameter and about 2 inches long. The installation of the pins could take a few hours or last into the night. "But then what will take more time-hopefully not too much more time, but potentially a lot more time-is putting the approximately 180 pins in that attach the solid rocket motor to the aft skirt," Rudolph said. Tuesday's work should begin around 8 a.m., and it probably will take an hour to lift the rocket into place. Each rocket will be installed atop the solid rocket booster's base-the aft skirts, which are 9 feet tall and were moved into place in July. The placement will be completed using two cranes-a small one that will lift the rockets from a horizontal position to a vertical one, and a large one that will hoist them into place. The second motor will be installed no earlier than Nov. The museum expects to livestream the installation. The first significant action begins Tuesday, when the science center will lift the first solid rocket motor into place. ![]() On Monday, the motors will be moved from their current location-next to the museum's dining terraces-a few hundred feet closer to the construction site. At liftoff, the white solid rocket boosters were set underneath Endeavour's wings and produced more than 80% of the lift during takeoff. Each solid rocket motor measures 116 feet and makes up most of the length of the 149-foot solid rocket boosters. This is the first big tall pieces of the stack going into the building," California Science Center President Jeffrey Rudolph said. The two solid rocket motors-each weighing 104,000 pounds and the size of a Boeing 757 fuselage-were transported by truck in early October from Mojave Air and Space Port to the science center in South Los Angeles. ![]()
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