Shuttle Endeavour Embarking to Los Angeles Museum

Endeavour will be the second of NASA's space shuttles to leave the Kennedy Space Center. The ship will piggyback on top of a specially modified 747 and head to a Los Angeles museum this week. From the article: "Endeavour's lifespan was relatively short by shuttle standards - 25 missions over 20 years, totaling 299 days in space. But those flights ran the gamut of orbital odysseys, including the sheer moxie of its May 1992 debut when three astronauts made an impromptu and unprecedented spacewalk to rescue a stranded Intelsat communications satellite."

And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[michaelmalak]

And hundreds of street trees are being cut down [cnn.com]. Street trees are not only aesthetic, but they provide shade to pedestrians (reducing VMT), protect pedestrians from cars jumping the curb, and provide shade to adjacent buildings, reducing energy consumption.

But just on aesthetics alone, the resultant concrete jungle visual blight will drag down that local economy far more than a space shuttle tourist attraction. The shuttle will be long forgotten before replacement trees can be grown.