#SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR FULL#

Once the building housing Endeavour is completed, additional aircraft and spacecraft will be moved in, and museum officials are still working out how long that will take.

#SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR FULL#

(The test orbiter Enterprise, which never flew in space, was assembled once in a vertical full stack at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and one other time at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County.) It'll be the first time a shuttle designed for space has been assembled vertically outside of Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Rudolph said. The assembly will begin with the solid rocket boosters, then the external fuel tank, then the shuttle, completing what's known as a full space shuttle stack. Once a lower portion of the building is completed - which will take about a year and a half - the shuttle will be installed in a process that will probably take three to four months, Rudolph said. To house Endeavour as if it's preparing for launch, the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will rise 20 stories. 'We thought about what would be the best way to display it, would have the most impact on everybody who sees it, but particularly young people, and create that spark that makes them dream and think that someday they want to be on a spacecraft like this, or participate in building one.' 'We didn't think about doing it the easiest way to display this,' Rudolph said. But displaying an entire space shuttle requires a structure with an open interior, Rudolph said. Designing the building was a challenge: A typical building of that size has floors, walls and columns. Part of the reason no other museum has displayed a space shuttle or Saturn V rocket vertically is the enormous cost and technical difficulty in doing so. And it's really sad that we're not able to keep flying something like that,' Chamitoff said. 'It was an amazing thing that we were flying.

By contrast, with the space shuttle, 'so much of the vehicle makes it into space, and then back down to the Earth.'

'Whatever capsules are flying today, whether it's Russian or SpaceX, you can fit three of them inside the shuttle cargo bay,' Chamitoff said. There are three remaining authentic Saturn V rockets on display, and all are displayed horizontally. It's going to be pretty impressive,' Chamitoff said.Ĭhamitoff said he thought the exhibit would be more dramatic than, for example, exhibits showing the Saturn V rocket that launched astronauts on the Apollo program to the moon, which are mostly just fuel tanks, with only a tiny proportion of the spacecraft returning to Earth. And then it'll be disappearing from you, up into the size of a building. With the addition of the twin solid rocket boosters and the fuel tank, the overall look when added to the shuttle itself will appear 'more than double that size. Although the reusable shuttle is already 122 feet long (around the same length as a Boeing 737) the external fuel tank is even longer - at 153.8 feet long, taller than a 15-story building. NASA chose, on cost grounds, to build Endeavour from spares rather than refitting Enterprise.The overall exhibit will be far more dramatic than the current temporary exhibit, where Endeavour is displayed horizontally, as if it has just landed. Structural spares built during the construction of Discovery and Atlantis were used in its assembly. The United States Congress approved the construction of Endeavour in 1987 to replace Challenger, which was destroyed in 1986. STS-134 was expected to be the final mission of the Space Shuttle program, but with the authorization of STS-135, Atlantis became the last shuttle to fly. It embarked on its first mission, STS-49, in May 1992 and its 25th and final mission, STS-134, in May 2011. Space Shuttle Endeavour (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-105) is a retired orbiter from NASA's Space Shuttle program and the fifth and final operational Shuttle built. Retired, displayed at California Science Center in Los Angeles, California Endeavour in orbit in 2008, during STS-123

Space shuttle endeavour