After decades of planning and the help of one San Diego company, the Space Shuttle Endeavour -- wrapped like a pretty present in shiny, white plastic -- arrived at its final destination on Tuesday at the California Science Center.
While the shuttle was only being moved a few hundred feet around the museum located in South Los Angeles, it was a delicate process that required the perfect protection. For that, the California Science Center called in Olympic Shrink Wrap, a San Diego company that specializes in perfectly wrapping the most sophisticated pieces of engineering for transport.
"When you tell people we do shrink wrap, everyone assumes that it's kind of like a saran wrap product that we use or even like, the clear stuff that they wrap pallets with," owner of Olympic Shrink Wrap Chris Groark said. "Ours is a lot different. It's ten mil thickness, and it's made of polyethylene... It will withhold up to the rigors of the sunlight of the weather."
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And withhold it must. The shuttle, which was previously part of a horizontal display at the Science Center in Exposition Park, will sit exposed to the elements as construction crews take years to build the walls of the new exhibit around the towering shuttle.
"Our shrink wrap basically cocoons it and protects it for, I think, about two years while the builders construct a whole building around it and put a whole roof over it," Groark said, confident that his product would stand the test of time.
The Olympic team was first approached for the project in mid-December. They came up with a game plan for how to shrinkwrap the spacecraft, which is 122 feet long with a 78-foot wingspan, but challenges presented themselves along the way.
"The engineers said, look, 'You can't use any tape and you can't use any strapping because the heat shield tiles that are placed on the bottom are just glued on.' And so, if our tape came in contact or any strapping, it would actually crush those tiles or those tiles might be removed," Groark said. "How are we going to put this whole wrap of plastic around this whole thing without being able to hold it in place?"
The Olympic team of six decided to use strapping to hoist pieces of shrinkwrap from the ceiling and walls, suspending the product in air as they attached the next piece, seemingly defying gravity while they wrapped. The entire project took six days and seven rolls of 40 by 100-foot-long plastic rolls.
The first assessment for how their product would hold up came days after they finished when an atmospheric river storm hit California with torrential downpours.
"They ended up rolling it out of the hangar, and then we staged it on the back lawn, and after that, we had a huge rainstorm, so the shuttle was protected. The wrap really worked out well," Groark said.
Once the new 200,000-square-foot Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center is opened, the Endeavour will be the only full-stack NASA space shuttle on display in an upright, launch-ready position.
On Monday two cranes lifted the shuttle 200 to 300 feet over the Oschin Center walls, then lowered the craft into position between the boosters and next to a 65,000-pound external fuel tank known as ET-94. Those components, part of the launch-ready configuration, were moved earlier -- also fitted with Olympic's special shrink wrap.
Before the heavy lift, Endeavour was fitted with a sling-type device attached to the crane. Two tuning-fork shaped devices acted as a lifting sling-- one at the front, one at the back of the shuttle. Two cranes then hoisted the lifting sling and shuttle into the air.
"This is an incredible day," said Alyson Goodall, senior vice president at the California Science Center. "We've been working toward this for decades. You're seeing the full shuttle stack that we've been dreaming of. It's really awe inspiring, and we can't wait for it to open to the public."
Endeavour's final move comes 13 years after its retirement. Endeavour flew 25 missions between 1992 and 2011, when NASA’s shuttle program ended.
Endeavour had been on display horizontally at the Science Center for more than a decade after its spectacular arrival in Los Angeles on the back of an NASA Boeing 747 in 2012. That spectacle in the sky was followed by a slow move through tight city streets to Exposition Park. The external tank arrived by barge and made a similar crawl to the Science Center.
The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will nearly double the Science Center's educational exhibition space and include three multi-level galleries, themed for air, space and shuttle.
An opening date for the $400 million center has not yet been determined.
The “Go for Stack" assembly began in July with installation of the bottom segments of the side boosters, known as aft skirts, for the first time outside of a NASA facility. In use, the boosters would be attached to the external tank to help the shuttle's main engines lift off.
The 116-foot-long (35.3-meter-long) rocket motors were trucked to Los Angeles from the Mojave Desert in October and installed the following month.
In all, NASA operated five shuttles in space. Shuttle Challenger was lost and its crew of seven died in a launch accident Jan. 28, 1986. Columbia broke apart during reentry on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven on board. Retired shuttles Atlantis and Discovery and the test ship Enterprise, which did not go to space, are on display across the country.
Atlantis is at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, where it is displayed as if in orbit with its payload doors open and robotic arm extended. Discovery rests on its landing gear at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.
Enterprise, which was released from a carrier aircraft for approach and landing tests, is displayed at the Intrepid Museum in New York.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
