"You couldn't take the tail off it," Phillips says. Taking the space shuttle apart and transporting it in pieces just wasn't possible because of the way it's covered in heat shield tiles, explains Ken Phillips, curator for aerospace science at the California Science Center, which won a fierce competition last year to get one of NASA's retired shuttles.
Getting it through the city streets in one piece is no easy feat. That's because Endeavour is simply huge: Its wingspan is 78 feet and the tip of its tail is five stories off the ground. That two-day, 1-mile-per-hour trip is scheduled for mid-October, and the planning for it has rivaled the amount of preparation it used to take to launch Endeavour into space. The giant spaceship will ride on top of a special transporter for about 12 miles. Then, after processing at the airport, the shuttle will have to make a long, unprecedented trip through city streets. Endeavour was scheduled to leave Florida on Monday but bad weather has delayed the start of the trip. If all goes as planned, the shuttle will take off from Kennedy Space Center at sunrise on Wednesday and land at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday. The shuttle will set off on a cross-country trip to its retirement home, flying from Florida to Los Angeles on the back of a modified jumbo jet.Īlong the way, the spaceship will stop off in Houston, home of NASA's Mission Control and, weather permitting, fly over NASA centers and various landmarks in cities that include San Francisco and Sacramento. Space shuttle Endeavour begins a kind of farewell tour this week. Space shuttle Endeavour is towed to the Kennedy Space Center landing facility in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Friday.
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