A long-held wish finally came true Wednesday, Oct. 28, as officials at the California Science center unveiled the new exhibit for the Space Shuttle Endeavor, as well as a surrounding new aerospace museum that highlights journeys in the sky.
Tickets have already gone on sale for opening day Nov. 13 and afterward of the 20-story-tall Endeavor exhibit, located inside the huge new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center added onto the existing center in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park. Tickets are ostensibly free, but cost $4 each to reserve in advance.
This new 200,000-square-foot expansion nearly doubles the size of the previous museum, which is free to visit and focused particularly on educating children. The centerpiece is the massive Endeavor, which is now displayed in full launch position, nose up, including the flown orbiter, rocket boosters and external tank.
“We consider this to be a gift to California and the world,” Jeffrey Rudolph, president and CEO of the California Science Center, said Wednesday. In the past, Rudolph has said that he yearned to acquire a space shuttle for the museum ever since he heard the NASA program was ending.
Gov. Gavin Newsom stopped by for a visit and a brief chat at the media unveiling, telling reporters that his 10-year-old son had been wowed by the exhibit.
“It was the triumph of imagination and daring,” Newsom said, extolling the state’s aerospace industry.
After traveling some 122 million miles in space, the Endeavor has returned home to California, only an hour’s drive from where it was originally built in Palmdale. Many Angelenos remember its final carrier flight over Southern California in 2012 and subsequent 12-mile journey over local streets from LAX to its new home in Exposition Park.
Officials say that the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will now be the only place in the world where people can see a complete shuttle system with an orbiter that actually flew to and from space.
The NASA space shuttle program began in 1981, to provide reusable spacecraft for missions such as repairs of satellites. It ended in 2011.
The Endeavor was built to replace the Space Shuttle Challenger, which tragically exploded in the air in 1986, killing all seven crew members aboard. Endeavor, designed and built in Southern California, first launched in 1992 and flew 25 missions in space. During its 299 days in space, Endeavor crews repaired the Hubble Space Telescope and helped build the International Space Station.
Art Hill, a retired engineer who worked on the space shuttle program for 37 years, now volunteers as a docent at the new complex. He likes the idea of educating people about the program. Although the public opening isn’t for two weeks, the museum has begun bringing in groups to visit to test its visitor systems.
“The kids who come in here look at this thing and think it looks like it’s made of cardboard,” Hill said, referring to the orbiter. “I have to convince them it’s real.” Most visitors are expecting to see a spacecraft that’s shiny and metallic, but he has to explain to them that it’s not going to look like that.
The Endeavor is covered with special heat-absorbing tiles, blanketry and graphite to cope with temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees when it reentered the atmosphere, he said. “There is an aluminum plane under there, but you can’t see it,” Hill said.
Long Beach resident Jo Murray, a columnist who attended Wednesday’s media preview, recalled working on the space shuttle program 50 years ago, when she worked in the aerospace industry.
Seeing the shuttle upright and ready for launch was “really an emotional moment,” Murray said. “There’s something about ships, spacecraft and trains: It almost seems like they have souls. They go so far beyond technology.”
In addition to the main Endeavor exhibit and other galleries, visitors can also enjoy some interactive experiences, many of which cost extra, including:
- The Launch Tower, a glass elevator that takes visitors 140 feet up the shuttle stack to a glass floor observation platform. This ride costs $10.
- The Shuttle Descent Slide, which takes people down 45 feet to represent the shuttle’s descent from orbit.
- The chance to sit inside a simulated flight deck and use the control panel with joysticks, lights, buttons, pedals and so forth.
- The Orbiter Landing Simulator which allows guests to sit inside and try to land the shuttle on a runway.
In addition to the Endeavor enclosure, the Korean Air Aviation Gallery displays authentic aircraft from gliders to fighter jets, as well as the front 70 feet of a Boeing 747 and experience five minutes of a simulated flight from Los Angeles to Seoul.
Other museum highlights include flown space capsules, rockets, telescopes and more. Altogether, the new complex reportedly cost $450 million. Drivers near L.A.’s Exposition Park can see its distinctive cone-shaped stainless steel dome sticking up above its surroundings, enclosing the 200-foot-high Endeavor display.
is well underway. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
On opening day, Nov. 13, the 10 a.m. ribbon cutting is scheduled to include some 30 astronauts, including all six crew members from Endeavor’s final journey. From Nov. 13 to 15, astronaut-and-space related talks are scheduled to be held every 30 minutes until 5 p.m.
The museum’s IMAX theater plans to begin screening four space-related films, including on the space shuttle program, the Hubble Space Telescope and a portrait of the Earth from space. Shows cost $13-15 per person and can be reserved in advance.
- The California Science Center is located at 700 Exposition Park Drive.
- Admission to the main museum is free, though certain interactive experiences cost extra. Online reservations charge a fee.
- Parking costs $20 or ride the Metro.Learn more: CaliforniaScienceCenter.org