(Endeavour is five hours late, comments from astronauts)
By Troy Anderson and Dana Feldman
LOS ANGELES, Oct 13 (Reuters) – The retired space shuttle
Endeavour rolled at a snail-like pace through narrow city
streets on Saturday, arriving five hours late at a key
checkpoint but steadily closing in on its final destination at a
museum.
Enthusiasm remained high despite the slow pace with an
estimated 165,000 bystanders lining the streets to greet the
spaceship.
At its current pace, the shuttle could arrive at the
California Science Center at about 2 a.m. Pacific Time (0900
GMT) on Sunday, said Paula Wagner, a spokeswoman for the center.
Endeavour nosed out of Los Angeles International Airport
before dawn on Friday for the 12-mile (19-km) trip to its
retirement home. Organizers had expected the shuttle to complete
its journey on Saturday evening but it fell behind schedule
crews had to make late adjustments to clear room for it.
The shuttle, which has been a cause for cheers and
expressions of awe from spectators watching it parade through
the streets, will become a tourist attraction at the center.
Endeavour was largely built in Southern California and was a
workhorse of the U.S. space program, flying 25 missions.
Astronaut Michael Fincke, who went to space in Endeavour,
said he and other astronauts on the shuttle’s parade route felt
the shuttle’s road trip – one unlike any voyage it has ever
taken – was special.
“We’ve seen our beautiful planet Earth from space, we’ve
been weightless, we’ve been able to fly – no special effects
needed when you’re in space,” Fincke told the crowd outside a
south Los Angeles shopping mall.
“And I tell you what, even though we’ve been in space we
would not rather be anywhere else than where we are today,” he
said.
Organizers had planned to have the Endeavour arrive at the
Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza mall at 2 p.m. but instead it
arrived after 7 p.m. about five hours behind schedule, said the
organizers, a coalition that includes the Science Center and
local authorities.
A huge crowd gathered outside the mall, where a dancers and
a high school marching band performed before the arrival of the
Endeavour, at what was a key checkpoint because the ship had to
make a 90-degree turn to the east. The trip from the mall to the
museum is about 4 miles (6.4 km).
MAINTENANCE AND TREE TRIMMING
The trip has been delayed in part due to maintenance needed
for the massive, wheeled transporter carrying Endeavor and the
need to trim some trees along the route, organizers said.
An estimated 100,000 spectators lined Martin Luther King
Boulevard to watch the final, eastward leg of the journey
through working-class south Los Angeles, a spokeswoman for the
move’s joint information center said.
Earlier in the day, about 65,000 people watched the shuttle
head north along Crenshaw Boulevard, said Steve Ruda, a
battalion chief for the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Thousands of spectators also watched earlier on Saturday
when the shuttle stopped for a festival-like morning rally
outside an arena in the nearby city of Inglewood.
Endeavour flew from 1992 to 2011 and was built to replace
the Challenger, which exploded seconds into a 1986 launch that
killed all seven crew members on board. Endeavour was taken out
of service at the end of the shuttle program.
The shuttle is 122 feet (37 meters) long and 78 feet (24
meters) wide and stands 5 stories tall at the tail, which police
said makes it the largest object ever to move through Los
Angeles. Its combined weight with the transporter is 80 tons.
Organizers say only a few inches separate Endeavour’s wings
from structures along the route, and workers have felled 400
trees along curbs to clear a path. The science center will plant
more than 1,000 trees to make up for their loss.
Some street lights, traffic signals, power poles and parking
meters were temporarily removed.
The project to move Endeavour will cost more than $10
million, said Shell Amega, a science center spokeswoman.
Charitable foundations and corporations have donated money and
services for the move.
Endeavour has hop-scotched across the country from Cape
Canaveral, Florida, on the back of a modified Boeing 747. It had
been parked at the airport in Los Angeles since arriving on
Sept. 21 after a ceremonial piggyback flight around California.
The shuttle will be displayed in a temporary hangar-style
metal structure to protect it from the elements. In 2017, a
200-foot-tall (61-meter) structure will open in which Endeavour
will stand vertically, said Ken Phillips, aerospace curator at
the California Science Center.
The other remaining shuttles also have found homes.
The Smithsonian in Washington has Discovery at its Steven F.
Udvar-Hazy Center museum in Virginia. New York City has the
prototype shuttle Enterprise at its Intrepid Sea, Air and Space
Museum. And the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral has
Atlantis, which the center will move to an on-site visitors
complex next month.
(Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Mary Slosson; Editing by David
Bailey and Bill Trott)
