by An external fuel tank manufactured to propel probes and equipment into space was tilted towards the heavens by another mechanism on Friday morning but the mission was only one step away.
Space Shuttle Endeavor’s giant orange tank, known as ET-94, was lifted by crane overnight and was ready to be positioned vertically between two 149-foot solid rocket boosters. But after 14 hours of work, the engineers postponed the final installation at 9 a.m. due to gusts of wind, which repeatedly disrupted the move.
The shuttle’s vertical stack – which houses the fuel tank and twin rocket boosters – is part of an ambitious display being built at the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.
Work is scheduled to resume at 10 p.m. Friday, when engineers expect winds to die down to 3 mph or less.
The initial lift was delayed 3½ hours by gusty winds, but in the end crews used two cranes to lift the massive tank, which weighs about 65,000 pounds and is 154 feet long.
Engineers were able to position the tank just before 7 a.m. and then waited two hours before delaying the final step – gently positioning the tank between the solid rocket boosters that had been positioned two months ago shin.
“It’s amazing to see this process,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center.
When the transfer is completed, the fourth of seven markers in the final goal of Endeavor will be stacked and displayed standing in the new 20-story museum, an expansion of the California Science Center.
Unlike any other exhibit featuring a retired space shuttle, Endeavor will be configured in a full steel setup, pointing toward the stars as if ready to launch. The shuttle was previously on display at the science center in a horizontal position from October 2012 until New Year’s Eve 2023, when preparations for its big move began in earnest.
What remains is Endeavour’s final migration to the new location, with the orbiter being lifted into place by a crane and finally attached to the rest of the stack. That is expected to happen within a month. This is the first time a shuttle designed for space has been assembled vertically outside a NASA or Air Force facility.
Once Endeavor is in place, scaffolding will be erected around the entire stack to protect the equipment as the rest of the museum is built around it. It could be a few years before the new museum is open to the public.
Read more: Space shuttle Endeavor is getting its own major museum in LA, which will be featured in the launch site
The 15-story orange outer tank, the last of its kind, arrived in Los Angeles in 2016, on a sea voyage through the Panama Canal and into Marina del Rey. During launch, the outer tank carried propellants—liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen—that powered the space shuttle’s three main engines to help propel the shuttle into orbit.
It was maneuvered to the construction site on Wednesday by self-propelled modular transporters similar to those used to move Endeavor through the streets of Los Angeles in 2012.
A crew of about 35 workers used a Liebherr LG 1750 crane to lift ET-94 on Friday. The same crane, which can lift 1.7 million pounds, was used in 2011 for the Kennedy Space Center launch pad in Florida that Endeavor used on its final space mission, Rudolph said.
Larry Clark, a retired space shuttle engineer who worked 44 years at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said the new exhibit will give his grandchildren a chance to see history.
“All my grandchildren were born after we retired the space shuttle program,” Clark said. “My 6-year-old granddaughter recently asked me when she was going to see the space shuttle, and now she has a place to visit in California.”
The shuttle project, estimated to cost $400 million, will reshape the skyline around the California Science Center, whose roots date back 110 years, as a showcase for agricultural and industrial projects. The site became the California Museum of Science and Industry in 1951 and reopened as the California Science Center in 1998.
The new aerospace museum wing is named for Samuel Oschin, the late Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist, who also bears his name on the Griffith Observatory planetarium and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center cancer institute. Financial contributions from the Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Oschin Family Foundation have been transformed into the construction of the museum’s new wing, which broke ground in mid-2022.
Endeavor flew 25 missions in space before its final flight in 2011, eight years after the retirement of the shuttle Columbia, on re-entry in 2003, and the shuttle fleet was set to retire. Endeavor’s most notable missions included the successful repair of the Hubble Space Telescope and assisting in the overall construction of the International Space Station.
The ET-94 fuel tank was created shortly before the last trek of the ill-fated Columbia, which seven astronauts were killed.
Although the tank never touched the stars, its journey to the Space Center was not without drama.
Manufactured in New Orleans’ Michoud Assembly Facility, ET-94 was placed on a barge and towed out of port on 13 April 2016. Twelve days later, the tank crossed the Panama Canal but ran into a storm near the Cayman Islands.
The trip was delayed again when the tugboat, the Shannon Dann, rescued four stranded fishermen a month later. off the coast of Baja California.
The tank finally arrived in Marina del Rey on May 21, 2016, capping a 5,000-mile ocean journey, and was transported 16 miles to the California Science Center.
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the LA Times and beyond delivered to your inbox six days a week.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
