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Once complete, the Endeavour will be in its 20-story vertical “ready-to-launch” position in what will be the world’s only authentic space shuttle stack. The orbiter will then be lifted hundreds of feet into the air and installed with the rest of the stack. Toward the end of January, crews will carefully move the Endeavour east through the California Science Center’s property. The last piece of the “Go For Stack” puzzle will be moving the roughly 176,000 pound orbiter from its temporary home at the Samuel Oschin Pavilion, where it’s been on public display for more than a decade. Once this major milestone is complete and the external tank is set-up in the construction zone, crews will turn their focus towards the Endeavour. The 154-foot-tall tank is the largest piece of the space shuttle stack. Goodall said the safety of the people and the artifacts involved is their top priority, and just like a space shuttle launch, the lift could get scrubbed. It's expected to take several hours into early Friday morning, weather, and wind permitting. “Body position is just like the crane position.” “It’s like choreographing and performing a difficult ballet,” he said. Now that ET-94 is put in place, the California Science Center will lift the enormous tank vertically with an even bigger crane late Thursday night.Ĭlark noted it’s going to be a slow and steady process because it fits directly between both of the solid rocket boosters. Goodall said it made the journey by barge through the Panama Canal from a NASA facility in Louisiana.
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Restoration specialists have also been painstakingly hand-sculpting the new pieces so they match the texture of the rest of ET-94.Īlyson Goodall, the chief advancement officer for the California Science Center, told LAist they weren’t sure if they’d be able to get this tank because NASA had other plans for the part.ĮT-94 did eventually make it to Exposition Park in 2017. Many pieces ended up being removed from the tank, and the museum has had specialists doing restoration work so the tank will be ready for display at the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center once construction is complete.įor example, most of the tank had been covered with a 1-inch thick layer of spray-on foam to protect it from the extreme heat of launch, but a lot of that foam was removed after the Columbia disaster.Ĭalifornia Science Center mold makers have been using silicone impressions to cast new pieces of foam that have been added to the areas that have a lot missing. Seven astronauts were killed, and ET-94 was studied extensively to try and figure out if it contributed to the disaster in any way, according to the California Science Center. ET-94’s sister tank, ET-93, was involved with that mission. However, Columbia ended up being destroyed in 2003 on its return to Earth for its 28th and final flight. He told LAist this tank is “very special” because it was built to fly to the International Space Station on the Columbia space shuttle, but it didn’t end up being used because those missions started requiring the newer super lightweight tanks. Larry Clark is a retired space shuttle engineer who worked on all 135 missions at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. They all look the same on the outside, but their internal construction and materials vary. Three types of tanks were used for the Space Shuttle Program: standard-weight tanks, lightweight tanks, and super lightweight tanks. It would then fall back toward the ground on a planned path over the Pacific Ocean or the Indian Ocean, almost completely disintegrating on its way through the atmosphere. The tank also worked as a structural support for the entire stack and is the only piece that was not reusable.Įach time a shuttle was sent out into space on a mission, its empty external tank would detach about 70 miles above the surface of the Earth. It carried all the propellants, such as liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, that flowed into the main engines to help push the space shuttle into orbit, according to the California Science Center. Jeff Rudolph, the president and CEO of the California Science Center, told LAist this is the last flight-ready external tank left in the world.ĮT-94 worked like your car’s gas tank, but for the space shuttle orbiter that's about 30 times heavier.