And to keep the views unobstructed, the building has been engineered with no vertical supports except its walls. The full-stack configuration of Endeavour is so tall that the museum will rise 20 stories to make room for it. And we’ll be the only place in the world with a stack of all real hardware,” Jenkins said. Of the three shuttles left, Endeavour will be the only one displayed upright In a dramatic finale that could come as early as January, cranes - the tallest of which will be about the height of City Hall - will raise the spacecraft from its horizontal position to point vertically for its final display, where the rest of the museum will then be built around it.Ĭalifornia Space shuttle Endeavour is getting its own grand museum in L.A., displayed in launch position It could be years before Endeavour will again be available for up-close viewing to museum guests. 31 before the shuttle is carefully moved to the new building site. It also marks the countdown for Endeavour to conclude its exhibition in a horizontal position, which will end Dec. Thursday’s announcement comes about a year after ground was broken on the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. Even a slight misalignment could cause major problems later on - making it impossible to connect the solid rocket boosters to the external tank, and the external tank to Endeavour. “You could arguably say the most critical piece to put in because they determine how everything else works,” said Dennis Jenkins, project director for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. Eventually, all half-million pounds of the full stack - including the shuttle Endeavour and a giant orange external tank - will rest on the base of the solid rocket boosters, bolted to the ground by eight supersized, superalloy fasteners that are 9 feet long and weigh 500 to 600 pounds. It’ll be the first of many delicate maneuvers conducted over roughly six months (if the weather cooperates). Workers will use a 300-ton crane to lower the bottom sections of the twin solid rocket boosters, which are 10,000 pounds apiece and roughly 9 feet tall, to the freshly built lowest section of the partly constructed $400-million Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. To get ready for the grand move, the state-run museum announced Thursday that crews will begin the installation of the base of the shuttle’s full stack on July 20. The final leg of the journey will culminate with a finish line celebration at Exposition Park on the evening of October 13th.After more than a decade on display at the California Science Center, the space shuttle Endeavour will begin the final trek to its permanent home at a new Los Angeles building in the coming months. Toyota Motor Sales vice president of marketing communications commented on the promotional event for Toyota stating in a press release “The entire journey is something the world will be watching, and gives us a chance to prove that the ‘overbuilt’ Tundra is built to do any job – even tow the space shuttle.” A special dolly will be underneath the Endeavor. The CrewMax sports a 5.7 liter V8 engine. There are no differences between it and what any buyer could come home with from a dealership including the vehicle's maximum towing rating of only 10,000 pounds. The exact Tundra that will be used is an unmodified 2012 ½ ton CrewMax. The Tundra will simply have to start out very slowly and keep the shuttle moving until it glides to a rest. In fact, they are so conservative because the rating is based on maximum loads heading up and down hills repeatedly. Keep in mind that towing ratings for trucks and other vehicles are incredibly conservative. Although the Endeavor is 300,000 pounds, and the Tundra isn’t normally expected to tow anything near that weight, the folks from Toyota have done some tests and they are pretty confident all will go well. Toyota is planning to tow the Space Shuttle Endeavor a quarter mile, the last quarter mile of its 12 mile journey from LAX to the Science Center. However, one upcoming marketing program features a new Tundra doing something incredible and it is not a fake or a modified Tundra doing it. As does their new Toyota Racing Dream Build Contest which will feature a heavily modified truck. Its outlandish commercials showing the Tundra do incredible jumps and other tricks that are faked comes to mind. Toyota has done a lot of great marketing with its trucks lately.
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