![]() With the shuttle’s major move now out of the way, the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will continue to be built around it. Photograph: Michael Juliano for Time Out Photograph: Michael Juliano for Time Out Photograph: Michael Juliano for Time Out ![]() Then a series of fine adjustments and movements were made until the shuttle achieved a “soft mate” with the stack in the early morning work on a “hard mate” to secure the flight hardware bolts and nuts followed the next evening. A 450-foot crane slowly and steadily raised Endeavour up, over into the construction site, close to the fuel tank and then even farther down, a process that took roughly an hour. After more than two hours spent removing a smaller crane attached to the back of the ship and then getting the angle just right, the space shuttle began its vertical lift shortly after midnight. We were invited to watch the rest of the lift from inside the under-construction Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. Photograph: Michael Juliano for Time Out Photograph: Michael Juliano for Time Out On Monday night around 9:30pm, as a small crowd gathered on State Drive to watch, a pair of cranes then raised it into an upright position over the course of a half hour or so. The horizontal craft hitched a ride on a transport that brought it closer to the construction site. The last piece of the puzzle was the space shuttle itself, which had been on display in a temporary building on the other side of the museum until the end of 2023. ET-94, the massive orange external fuel tank that had been visible just outside of the former Endeavour exhibition space, joined them earlier this month. The 116-foot-tall solid rocket motors underwent the same process in November, followed shortly by the forward assemblies atop them. The museum began its “Go for Stack” process last July by lifting the aft skirts, the rocket boosters’ conical bases, into the construction site via crane. You’ll want to see it soon, though: As construction continues, scaffolding will begin to block some viewpoints of the stack in the next two weeks until eventually it’s completely concealed with a roof over its head. The best view of the shuttle is from the plaza or green patch between the Coliseum and BMO Stadium, though you can also get a closer-up but more obscured view near the rose garden to the north. The nose half of the orbiter as well as much of the fuel tank and rockets are visible from just about anywhere in Exposition Park right now. It’ll be another few years before you can step inside the museum and see the retired NASA shuttle up close again, but Angelenos can easily catch a glimpse of it right now-at least the top part of it. Now displayed in a vertical, ready-to-launch position in front of an orange fuel tank and a pair of rocket boosters (the only space shuttle in the world that can claim that distinction), Endeavour’s successful lift marks the completion of the most major milestone in the museum’s sixth-month-long “Go for Stack” process. ![]() On Monday night, the California Science Center pitched the 178,000-pound shrink-wrapped orbiter upright and both raised and lowered it via crane into the future Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. Now, Space Shuttle Endeavour has added one final expedition to its lengthy travel itinerary: a ride on a high-rise–sized crane. It embarked on 25 trips into space, a one-way flight to Los Angeles on top of a 747 and a parade along the city’s surface streets.
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