by Weather-delayed, the space shuttle Endeavor will undergo its final historic lift beginning Monday night, no other retired orbit.
Plans for the upcoming move – implementing the crown jewels of the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center – have been in the works for more than a decade. First, a pair of cranes will lift the shuttle from a horizontal position to a vertical position; the spacecraft will be attached to a sling, a large metal frame that will support it during the transfer. An 11-story crane will lift Endeavour’s tail, while a 40-story crawler crane – about the height of City Hall – will lift the nose.
Once the shuttle is pointed toward the stars, the shorter crane will disengage, allowing the taller crane to gently swing the orbiter to its final position and lower it to dock with the huge orange outer tank. The outer tank is attached to a twin solid rocket booster, which is attached to the base of the display.
When it’s finished — and the rest of the museum is built in the coming years — L.A. will have the only retired space shuttle displayed in an all-steel setup as if it were ready for launch.
There will be two parts to the transfer. The first – the so-called “soft mate” – is due to start around 10 pm on Monday and could take several hours.
“That’s the part of lifting it into the building and getting it close to orbit,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center.
The second part will “catch” Attempt to the external tank.
“It’s very sensitive to get it in the right position,” said Rudolph. “It puts all the attached hardware in the right place in orbit.
Once that’s done, everything will still need to be tightened up, Rudolph said, but the transition will be effectively complete. It is believed that by Thursday, everything will be “hard coupled, meaning everything will be torqued, bolted as it will be forever. And the sling will come out, and we will say, ‘Done,'” he said.
The schedule may change due to the weather, as strong winds may force the transfer to be postponed.
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Nothing should change after that until the museum opens the payload bay doors in a few years when Endeavor is ready for public display, Rudolph said.
The shuttle presents different challenges than the outer tank, which was completed earlier this month. The tank is so large that, because it was lowered, there was less than an inch of space between it and the solid rocket boosters.
The Endeavor orbiter — the last space shuttle ever built — will require crews to maneuver a 78-foot-long object and “get everything completely level and aligned properly, and smoothly,” Rudolph said.
“There are some places where there are some challenging parts in lowering it because of the tight fit with the wings and vertical stabilizer,” he said. “And then the challenge is to actually bring the orbiter – ‘catch it’ – at the three attachment points.”
As Endeavor is essentially a glider with a huge wingspan, it will be difficult to guide it down in strong winds.
“Wind and wings don’t go well on a crane,” Rudolph said.
“This has never been done before, with cranes and outside and at a construction site,” he said.
Once the shuttle was stacked with its outer tank and solid rocket booster at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, assembly took place inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building – one of the largest in the world by volume, rising more than 50 story and equipped with strength. of cranes and platforms from which to work.
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In Los Angeles, crews had to carefully erect, dismantle and reformat scaffolding to enable them to make the correct connections.
Last minute changes were also made. During the arrival of the outer tank, there were times when the team had to “scurry up and remove some pieces of scaffolding and reconfigure it while we were doing the lowering,” Rudolph said.
The orbiter’s main elevator will likely take one night. In contrast, the external tank lift took two nights. Winds delayed the first one, although crews were able to start the lift before work stopped mid-morning. On the second night, it was possible to lower the tank further, between the solid rocket boosters.
Officials hope to live stream the latest lift. A live stream to raise the outer tank was destroyed due to technical difficulties, and officials are working to resolve those problems before the orbiter moves on Monday.
Read more: Successful takeoff: Space shuttle Endeavor rockets are installed
A veteran of 25 space missions from 1992 to 2011, Endeavor made its final flight in 2012, ending a cross-country trip at Los Angeles International Airport before making a three-day trip through the city’s streets to the California Science Center. For 11 years, Endeavor was on display in a temporary hangar, the Samuel Oschin Pavilion, as the museum worked on a permanent home. The effort was removed from the December 31 display.
The all-steel configuration is so tall that the new museum will rise 20 stories to accommodate it.
To keep views unobstructed, the building has been engineered without vertical supports other than its walls. It will feature a diagonal grid developed by engineering firm Arup and covered by a stainless steel facade. Such “diagrids” have been used in other tall buildings, including the 46-story Hearst Tower in New York City, the iconic 40-story oval Gherkin skyscraper in London and part of London’s City Hall in the shape eggs.
Once the entire shuttle stock is in place, the rest of the museum will be built around it. It could be a few years before it is open to the public, given the construction schedule and the additional time needed to install exhibits.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
