They are light-weight filament-wound cases built for polar-orbit space shuttle launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, a project cancelled after Challenger. The 188,000-square-foot facility should open in 2019.Ĭalifornia Science Center has a pair of solid rocket boosters acquired from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. command module from the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project that featured the first handshakes in space between Americans and the Soviets.Ībout 24 months after construction begins, Endeavour will be moved from the pavilion to her new home a short distance away on the museum campus, be hoisted upright and then mated to the tank and boosters. The current CSC museum already houses three space capsules - Mercury 2 that launched the chimpanzee named Ham in 1961, Gemini 11 flown by Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon in 1966 and the U.S. The center will have three halls - air, space and shuttle - to host a variety of artifacts, aircraft and spacecraft. Officials are working to raise the $250 million through gifts and pledges to fund the project. The museum will break ground later this year for the permanent home of the vertical Endeavour attraction - the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. Restoration crews will be busy re-installing the orbiter attachment hardware to the exterior of the tank and repairing the areas of foam removed by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and around the intertank flanges that NASA had removed for other engineering tests. The tank will go on immediate display as well, residing on the north side of the pavilion for the public to see. Admission to the Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Pavilion is free, with a shuttle main engine, fuel cell and Endeavour’s galley and toilet among the other artifacts to see up close year-round. The event celebrated our sense of wonderment and community pride,” said Inglewood Mayor James Butts.Įndeavour has been on display, horizontally, to the public since October 2012. “Nearly 1.5 million people came out to cheer Endeavour, bringing joy to everyone, young and old. It will be reminiscent of Endeavour’s 12-mile trek from the Los Angeles International Airport to the museum in October 2012, albeit less disruptive to utilities and no trees will need to be cut down this time given the tank’s smaller width. On Saturday, May 21, the tank will travel the Los Angeles city streets from the marina dock to Exposition Park in 13 to 18 hours, parading a distance of 16 miles. Officials say the trip will hug the coastline and would come ashore if bad weather threatens during the trip. The month-long journey by sea that began today will take the tank-carrying barge through Panama Canal and around to Marina del Rey, California. ![]() “With the same outpouring of community support we saw with the arrival of Endeavour, we look forward to celebrating this gift from NASA as it journeys from the coast through city streets to the California Science Center.” ![]() “With the transfer of ET-94 from NASA, we will have the ability to preserve and display an entire stack of flight hardware, making the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center an even more compelling educational experience,” said California Science Center President Jeffrey Rudolph. An external tank falls back to Earth after jettison. The tanks were the only expendable part of the shuttle system, separating from the orbiters while on suborbital trajectories and burning up in the atmosphere on the way back down. ![]() Now, it is headed to the California Science Center, home of the retired orbiter Endeavour, to become part of an exhibit that will display the full shuttle stack in the vertical just as it was on the launch pad.Įxternal tanks - 28 feet in diameter and 154 feet long - were the structural backbone of the shuttle vehicle on launch, holding the twin solid rockets while being the reservoir of a half-million gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for the orbiter main engines. NASA did not have the tank restored to flight status, in part because it was manufactured to older weight specifications that made it heavier than the tanks that flew the final shuttle flights. ![]() 94, the relic of a bygone era departed NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility where Lockheed Martin technicians had built the 65,000-pound structure in 2000 for use on a space shuttle mission.īut the tank never flew, instead serving as an investigation tool and giving up insulating foam samples for dissection in the wake of the Columbia accident in 2003. On the 35th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch, the last remaining external fuel tank set sail today from its factory in New Orleans to Los Angeles and a remarkable museum attraction in the making.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |