Space shuttle Endeavour preps for move to vertical landing in new museum

LOS ANGELES – After more than a decade on display at the California Science Center, the space shuttle Endeavour will begin the final trek to its permanent home at a new Los Angeles building in the coming months.

To get ready for the grand move, the state-run museum announced Thursday that crews will begin the installation of the base of the shuttle’s full stack on July 20. Workers will use a 300-ton crane to lower the bottom sections of the twin solid rocket boosters, which are 10,000 pounds apiece and roughly 9 feet tall, to the freshly built lowest section of the partly constructed $400-million Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.

It’ll be the first of many delicate maneuvers conducted over roughly six months (if the weather cooperates). Eventually, all half-million pounds of the full stack – including the shuttle Endeavour and a giant orange external tank – will rest on the base of the solid rocket boosters, bolted to the ground by eight supersized, superalloy fasteners that are 9 feet long and weigh 500 to 600 pounds.

“You could arguably say (the base of the boosters are) the most critical piece to put in because they determine how everything else works,” said Dennis Jenkins, project director for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. Even a slight misalignment could cause major problems later on – making it impossible to connect the solid rocket boosters to the external tank, and the external tank to Endeavour.

Thursday’s announcement comes about a year after ground was broken on the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. It also marks the countdown for Endeavour to conclude its exhibition in a horizontal position, which will end Dec. 31 before the shuttle is carefully moved to the new building site. It could be years before Endeavour will again be available for up-close viewing to museum guests.

In a dramatic finale that could come as early as January, cranes – the tallest of which will be about the height of City Hall – will raise the spacecraft from its horizontal position to point vertically for its final display, where the rest of the museum will then be built around it.

It will be a crowning achievement 11 years after the last space shuttle built captivated Californians as it made its final flight aboard a Boeing 747, past the Golden Gate Bridge and Hollywood sign, before landing in L.A. A three-day journey through city streets brought Endeavour to its permanent museum home at the California Science Center.

“It’s a dream come true, for sure,” said Lynda Oschin, wife of the late Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist Samuel Oschin, an avid space enthusiast and namesake of the new museum. The exhibit will hold “the only shuttle in the whole world in launch position.”

The exhibit is believed to be the tallest authentic spacecraft displayed vertically in the world. It also has an authentic portable unit called Spacehab, which was used as a lab or storage pod – the only remaining shuttle to have such equipment – in its payload bay. One of the payload bay doors will be open and viewable to the public.

Endeavour, the so-called jewel of the shuttle fleet that flew 25 missions in space, will be viewable from multiple platforms – including beneath the orbiter’s three main engines as well as looking down, through a glass floor, directly at its nose.

“It’s all real hardware. And we’ll be the only place in the world with a stack of all real hardware,” Jenkins said.

The full-stack configuration of Endeavour is so tall that the museum will rise 20 stories to make room for it. To keep the views unobstructed, the building has been engineered with no vertical supports except its walls.

The building will feature a “diagrid” – a diagonal grid – developed by engineering firm Arup and covered by a stainless steel facade. Diagrids have been used in other tall buildings, including the 46-story Hearst Tower in New York City, the iconic 40-story ovular Gherkin skyscraper in London and a section of the egg-shaped London City Hall.

The most dramatic part of installation will come as early as January when the 66,000-pound, 154-foot long external tank – the last of its kind in existence – will be rolled out and hoisted by cranes into a vertical position.

The same month, Endeavour will be moved from its temporary hangar, on the western edge of the California Science Center. It’ll 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.

It’ll be parked there for a couple of days as crews prepare equipment to move it to the eastern edge of the science center. Workers will use self-propelled modular transporters, similar to those used in 2012 when Endeavour was moved from Los Angeles International Airport to the museum.