— The completed space shuttle is upright for the first time in more than a decade.
Overnight, Monday and early Tuesday morning (January 29-30), two large cranes carefully lifted NASA’s retired winged orbiter Endeavor, a twin solid rocket, from a side street in Los Angeles into the air. It was lowered onto an external tank installed in the tank. booster.
This stacking process was common during the active shuttle program in preparation for launch, but this time the Endeavor exhibit will be installed at the California Science Center’s Samuel Oshin Aerospace Center, which is still under construction. Finally done to install.
Jeffrey Rudolph, president and CEO of the California Science Center, said in an interview with collectSPACE, “We’re so excited to actually complete this and see a 30-year dream come true. “There is,” he said. “I think we all breathed a huge sigh of relief knowing that the most difficult part of this whole project, and something that had never been done on a site like this before, was over.”
Initially proposed as a picturesque exhibit by Science Center staff in the 1990s, the path to building a space shuttle in Exhibit Park was predicated on NASA’s decision to award Endeavor to the Science Center for display. After doing that, it started to become a reality. For the past 12 years, the iconic spacecraft has been displayed on wheels off the floor, but the original plan was to permanently display Endeavor in a vertical launch-like configuration.
To achieve this goal, the science center procured an external tank built for NASA’s last flight (which was shipped to LA via the Panama Canal) and installed two flight-proven solid rocket boosters. In addition to being acquired from Northrop Grumman, Endeavor’s new home, estimated to cost $400 million, was made possible by an extensive list of donors led by the Samuel Oshin Family Foundation.
Under the supervision of Dennis Jenkins, a veteran of NASA’s shuttle program, and with a team of former colleagues, the science center’s “Go for Stack” initiative completed two lifts in three lifts in July, November, and December. A solid rocket booster has been assembled. 2023. An external tank followed earlier this month.
The Endeavor was shrouded in shrink wrap to protect the thermal blankets and tiles from dust and dirt that would be kicked up on a typical work site, and after being removed from the exhibition pavilion, it was transported a short distance near its future home. I drove. Friday (January 26). There, the same yellow slings used to lift Endeavor at NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) in Florida and from a shuttle transport plane at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in 2012 were used for the last time. was reinstalled on the vehicle.
Endeavor touched the ground around 10 p.m. PDT (1 a.m. EDT, 6 a.m. Tuesday) Monday as two cranes slowly lifted the 122-foot-long (37-meter) spacecraft from the transport plane. Distant. The orbiter then slowly pivoted vertically and a 450-foot-tall (137-meter) crane lifted Endeavor over the partially constructed wall of the Osin Aerospace Center.
Four hours later, at approximately 2 a.m. PDT, Endeavor was in position and ready for a “soft fit” to the top and bottom attachment points of the external tank. This is followed by a hardmate that secures the orbiter to the stack with pins and bolts.
The sling and crane are then removed and the “Go for Stack” ends. However, there is still much work to be done before Endeavor is available to the public again.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” Rudolph said. “You have to go through a large assembly of structural steel on top of the shuttle. It’s the most complex part of the structure.”
“We are building a 60 meter high space [61 meters] There are no pillars or walls other than the perimeter that supports the whole,” he said.
To prevent the possibility of debris falling onto the vehicle from above, a steel plate shell was built on top of the Endeavor, using scaffolding built around the tank and booster as a supporting framework before building construction resumed. It will be built.
Construction is then expected to continue for the next 18 months until outfitting begins.
“There are about 100 other spacecraft and planes in this building, all of which are much simpler than the Endeavor or Space Shuttle stacks, but they are not easy,” Rudolph said. “Then we have a lot of work ahead of us because we have a lot of exhibits to install.”
In addition to setting up all the other displays, Jenkins and his team will need to take down all the scaffolding, unpack Endeavor and open one of the 60-foot-long orbiters. [183-meter] Payload bay door. His 20-story-tall observation gantry, installed next to the Space Shuttle, gives visitors a chance to see inside the orbiter’s cargo hold, where his modules are installed at the flying space hub. Offers.
Although an opening date has not yet been set, Rudolph expects the Samuel Oshin Aerospace Center and its Endeavor exhibit to be ready for its debut within the next few years.
