Space Shuttle Endeavor's Final 'Flight': Hoisted By Crane Tonight Into Future Site of a Museum (yahoo.com) 30
The Los Angeles Times reports that after more than 10 years of planning, "Barring weather delays, the space shuttle Endeavour will undergo its final, historic lift starting Monday night, a maneuver no other retired orbiter has undergone..."
First, a pair of cranes will hoist the shuttle from a horizontal position to a vertical one; the spacecraft will be attached to a sling, a large metal frame that'll support it during the move. An 11-story crane will lift the tail of Endeavour, while a 40-story crawler crane — about the height of [Los Angeles'] City Hall — will lift the nose. Once the shuttle is pointed toward the stars, the shorter crane will be disconnected, leaving the taller crane to gently swing the orbiter to its final position and lowering it to be affixed with the giant orange external tank. The external tank is attached to twin solid rocket boosters, which are connected to the exhibit's foundation...
Once the shuttle full stack is in place, the rest of the museum will be built around it. It could be a few years before it is open to the public, given the construction schedule and additional time needed to install exhibits.
"Los Angeles will be home to the only retired space shuttle displayed in a full-stack arrangement as if ready for launch," the article points out.
Officials hope to livestream the historic lift on Monday night at 9:30 p.m. PST.
Once the shuttle full stack is in place, the rest of the museum will be built around it. It could be a few years before it is open to the public, given the construction schedule and additional time needed to install exhibits.
"Los Angeles will be home to the only retired space shuttle displayed in a full-stack arrangement as if ready for launch," the article points out.
Officials hope to livestream the historic lift on Monday night at 9:30 p.m. PST.
Should be "Endeavour" in title (Score:1)
Captain Cook sheds a tear...
Shuttle was a great platform for learning... (Score:5, Informative)
... to develop reusable rockets, but terrible as an actual launch system. Imagine where we'd be if plans to retire and replace Shuttle with a "lessons learned" replacement had started in the 1980s, and come online in the early 1990s (instead of ISS becoming the priority). Even after the first flight we'd learned a lot about design flaws (lots of tile damage, one near-burnthrough stopped only by fortunate positioning near a steel component, etc) and major incorrect assumptions within the systems. After a few years the operating cost and turnaround time assumptions had become clear. Challenger pointed out the O-ring problem, but it's not clear that this would have even applied at all to a replacement, and Shuttle would surely have continued flying well past that point even if an accelerated replacement decision had been made in the early 1980s. No need to wait for Columbia; it was clear long before then that side-mounting was a bad idea.
Any lessons-learned replacement would have gone with a non-alumium structure (either titanium or steel) to simplify the TPS and make it more resilient. The simplified TPS would have focused on minimizing tile maintenance (which is simpler when you can run the frame hotter). It would have been stacked vertically and not hauled big heavy SSMEs to orbit - engines of which should have been redesigned for lower maintenance anyways. The assumptions on the reuse cost of the boosters were all wrong, in that cutting them up, cleaning them out, refilling the propellant, replacing the O-rings, etc was nearly as expensive as new. NASA instead might have - since computers were really advancing - started looking more into vertical landing of the side and centre stages (centre stage, rather than ET, because with the Shuttle no longer side-mounted, if they wanted SSME-descendants, they'd have had to go on the bottom). Or alternatively parachuting the engines down off the centre stage while keeping it expendable. The crossrange requirement would likely have been dropped. Shuttle could have gotten a lot lighter for the same capabilities - and with lower density, further simplified its TPS requirements. And of course (like Buran) they would have engineered an unmanned flight mode.
It's by iteration that you really advance technology. It's a shame that the Shuttle became such a static cost-drain for so long. Great concept (albeit hindered by budget cuts in development). Problems discovered (it happens, that's tech development for you!). Now iterate. The faster, the better (except when crew lives are at stake, where flight reliability must be well proven first).
If the politics at the time were arguing for post-Cold-War internationalism... instead of an International Space Station, why not an International Launch System? Russia had just seen its Buran dreams collapse. The Space Shuttle was having problems. Why jump straight to a massively expensive space station rather than fixing the launch cost issue first? That always seemed strange to me.
Re: (Score:3)
And I guess if we're rewriting history, instead of just trying to prop up Russia's space agency with the ISS (let's not kid ourselves, that was a major goal, and a lot of outside money was funneled into Russia to do so, primarily in the form of launch contracts), it would have been nice if the propping-up had also focused on other former Soviet states (including Ukraine, which also had a sizable rocketry industry at the time - in particular, engine development). At least Kazakhstan remained indirectly fund
Re: (Score:2)
Buran had nothing to do with "Russia", it was a USSR project. The only thing Russia had to do with it is close it down.
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That's a fair criticism, but remember that the context of the above post was in the context of the US pairing with Russia on the ISS, and how that could have instead been paired into a international launch system development programme. Russia was indeed one of the SSRs (then countries) that had worked on Buran. In my subsequent post, I stated my support for (unlike with the ISS) the other former Soviet states having been invited to play a significant part.
So yes, while I sympathize with your criticism, t
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Sadly, bureaucracies are counter productive due to corruption, scale inefficiencies, the Peter Principle and other forms of institution overhead. Once an organization has outlived its usefulness, it should be disbanded.
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I see, like Boeing and the ULA?
Re: (Score:2)
I see, like Boeing and the ULA?
no, like Boeing now, and ULA eventually.
Often we see valued assets morphed into a new corporate entity while the old (debt-ridden) shell is discarded
corporations remind me of ...
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You only have to look at Buran to see what it could have been. Buran had no main engine, it used boosters to reach orbit. Those could have been made re-usable, but the Buran itself was already very reusable and only needed inspection and tile replacement before it could launch again. No costly engine rebuild.
Who can say if NASA would have changed to that design... Probably not since the Soviets did it, and because NASA seems to like to refine what it has rather than scrap it and try something different. Pro
Re: (Score:2)
While that is sorta true it's very easy for us to all talk up Buran because so much of it's superior capability is on paper, it had exactly one launch (even Energia didn't quite succeed on it's first flight) and by that time the Shuttle had 25 launches under it's hat.
We can certainly estimate all the potential it could have lived up to but my guess is that while it improved definite aspects over Shuttle there is certainly no guarantee it would not have turned into a similar type of boondoggle for various re
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You only have to look at Buran to see what it could have been. Buran had no main engine, it used boosters to reach orbit. Those could have been made re-usable, but the Buran itself was already very reusable and only needed inspection and tile replacement before it could launch again. No costly engine rebuild.
Yeah, no costly engine rebuild on the spaceplane. We do costly engine rebuild on the rocket instead (of course, *if* they could make Energia reusable) but that's tooootally different.
Who can say if NASA would have changed to that design... Probably not since the Soviets did it, and because NASA seems to like to refine what it has rather than scrap it and try something different. Probably some political issues there.
The problem is, spaceplanes like those are a solution in search of a problem. If you need to put people on ISS why the hell are you also launching a huge, empty cargo bay? A Soyuz/Dragon - style capsule is more efficient.
If you need to put heavy equipment in orbit - just put in on top of rocket, JWST style, why the hell are
Weird 404 (Score:2)
Their go-for-stack page is still linked from their main page but 404, oddly.
Here's a recent archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
meh perfect (Score:3, Insightful)
Ironic that L.A. wonks chose to build its story in its role of space exploration on space flight which jeopardized lives and the very existential life of NASA itself. What’s with the attraction to gigantic( QE2, Space Shuttle, etc) tombstone monuments? Scientists argued long and hard for remote autonomous space exploration missions like " Ingenuity ", the Mars helicopter. Cheaper, easier, less risk-y robots and many, many more missions to learn much more per dollar invested for scientists gain of knowledge missions.
NASA, its political deep state partners and astronauts insisted human flight was only way to get the public to support and fund the uncertainties of space. Science could piggyback along for the ride. Politicians promoted human flight as a national pride and funding an imperative for NASA to succeed at any cost.
Indeed Ingenuity is the new pinnacle of Space and apropos moment to confine NASA and its past to a museum after all
Re:meh perfect (Score:4, Insightful)
The goal all along has been to move humanity into space. You can only learn to function, and later live, in space by doing it. Of course it "jeopardized lives", every exploration in human history has "jeopardized lives". People still go because they think the risk is worth it, my great-great grandparents risked bears, wolves, starvation, unbelievable winters, disease, and Mormon raiders from Beaver Island to homestead in the wilds of northern Michigan. They survived, a lot of their neighbors didn't. They felt it was worth it, and some of their descendants today would take a trip to the Moon even knowing it was one-way. I pity those of you who are lacking that sense of adventure and abhor risk taking.
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I mean there's plenty of museum exhibits in LA that feature our contributions to unmanned space flight as well. For instance at this very same museum there is a full sized engineering mockup of the Cassini probe. I think the Griffith Observatory used to have a full sized mockup of Voyager as well but I don't think its there any more. In any case manned space flight has always captured the public's imagination a lot more than unmanned flight has, with maybe a few exceptions like Hubble and Webb telescope
Hmm (Score:2)
How come I'm worried about this step?
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
From the lift procedures planning document:
C.II.A.36: "After the lift has been deemed to be a success, each of the NASA and Los Angeles team leads returns to their respective control rooms." ..37: "Robotics engineers from each party run their respective KUKA arms through their full startup and self-test procedures." ..38: "The giant rackets are lowered and affixed into the grippers of each respective KUKA arm." ..39: "The two sides take turns swinging at the orbiter, with the first party to cause the orbiter to fully wrap around the crane in a clockwise (NASA) or counterclockwise (LA) direction being declared the winner."
The tanks alone are astounding. (Score:5, Interesting)
I live near this museum, and driving by and seeing just the fuel tank and boosters up last week...wow....
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We geeks get a "booster" in our pants when we see it.
Kinda dumb (Score:2)
So they're positioning it in the worst way possible, such that visitors can really only see the bottom of it well.
Re:Kinda dumb (Score:4, Informative)
Based on the rendering in the article, the top one is level with the crew module, although I can't tell from the rendering in the article if there's a bridge to the hatch.
The other thing that would make it cooler is if the cargo doors were open, especially if there were a payload in it, and the arm sticking out.
Re: Kinda dumb (Score:1)
That's stoopid.
upvote parent please (Score:2)
The parent of my comment here should get upvoted, to counter the nonsense of the grandparent who suggested the obvious staging that has already been done.
I logged in (for the first time in like a year) to upvote it, but apparently I don't know how to do that anymore.
Re: (Score:1)
But Hal 9000 kept ignoring that request.
Would still be flying today if... (Score:1)
I guess nobody ever saw how it was stacked at KSC? (Score:2)
multiple large cranes using a special lifting jig would lift the shuttle over the supporting bay structure in the VAB, over 100 feet, and then down onto the launch pad.
Yeah, sure it's "never been done before" and unlike before it's not loaded with a payload or equipment so it's lighter. Here's an excerpt of part of the lift in the VAB [youtube.com]
Perfect viewing place (Score:2)
This will be the perfect place to experience the next big earthquake in LA.
A Toyota Tundra towed it over a bridge (Score:2)
It was towed there through the streets of Los Angeles, from the airport, where it landed with its Boeing 747 carrier plane. A Toyota Tundra towed it across a bridge on a dolly due to the total weight of the self-propelled shuttle carrier and shuttle being too heavy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]