Officials at the California Science Center in Exposition Park were close to completing a dream launched 30 years ago as they worked to lift the space shuttle Endeavour from its current horizontal position into a vertical ready-for-launch position Monday night.
The painstaking process involved putting the massive shuttle in a sling, hoisting it over a wall with two cranes, one at the tail and another by the nose, and then carefully attaching it to the existing external tank and its rocket boosters.
Crews were paying close attention to the weather during the installation, which officials said could take anywhere from four to 24 hours.
The project started as a pipedream in 1992 and has since blossomed into a reality.
“We said someday, they’ll retire a space shuttle, and we should try to get one and we should put it into launch position,” President and CEO of the California Science Center Jeff Rudolph told KTLA’s Rachel Menitoff.
Rudolph explained that the retired shuttle is fragile and must be perfectly aligned, but when the installation is finished, it will make history.
“When completed, this space shuttle stack will be the only place in the world that you’ll be able to see a complete space shuttle system, all real hardware, in launch position,” Rudolph said.
Once the 20-story display is in its final resting position, it will serve as the centerpiece of the new 200,000 square-foot Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, which will double the Science Center’s educational exhibit space.
The orbiter completed 25 trips to space before it was retired in 2012, with its final journey ending at the Los Angeles International Airport, followed by a procession through the streets of L.A. For the last 11 years, Endeavour has been in a temporary hangar where space enthusiasts have marveled at its design and engineering.
“This was the vehicle that really made us very proficient as a space exploring civilization,” Kenneth Phillips, curator for Aerospace Science said.
Phillips has worked on the project from the start and says he expects the display to bring space travel to life.
“What I hope they find is that all of this stuff that seems so amazing and so complex really isn’t,” he said. “There’s a few basic principles and if you understand them, you can learn a lot more about this stuff than you think you can.”