Endeavor Launch Pad Being Rebuilt Piece By Piece 48
dangle writes "The Exposition Park museum in LA is working to rebuild the Endeavor launch stack, a display that will take thousands of pieces to complete due to parts that are scattered at NASA facilities, museums and other places across the U.S. Most are one of a kind and impossible to replicate. Dennis Jenkins, who spent his entire 30-plus year career sending the shuttles into space, is playing a key role in locating essential parts using his own and his colleagues' institutional memory. Employed by NASA contractor Martin Marietta, he helped write the software used in loading and controlling the liquid oxygen needed to launch the 2,250-ton shuttle assembly into low Earth orbit. Now, with the program part of a bygone era of exploration, the 57-year-old works for the California Science Center, helping officials figure out how to rebuild Endeavour."
It will certainly confuse future archaeologists (Score:5, Funny)
Thousands of years from now archaeologists will uncover the previously unknown LA launch site and will confuse the hell out of them.
"The discovery of this launch site is extraordinary in that we never knew of this location being used for launching the Space Shuttle. It doesn't appear in any NASA records we're found so perhaps this was a top-secret location. We are, however, puzzled as to why they would have a launch facility in the middle of such a large sprawling city. One theory we have is that this was a decoy launch site used to confuse the Japanese during the second world war. This finding may rewrite history!"