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"This has never been done like this before, with cranes and outside and at a construction site," he said. "Wind and wings don't go well on a crane," Rudolph said. "And then the challenge is actually bringing the orbiter - 'capturing it' - at the three attach points."īecause Endeavour is essentially a glider with a massive wingspan, it'll be difficult to guide it down if there are strong winds. "There are a few places where there's some challenging parts in the lowering of it because of the tight fit with the wings and vertical stabilizer," he said. With the Endeavour orbiter - the last space shuttle ever built - crews will need to maneuver an object with a 78-foot wingspan and get "everything absolutely level and aligned properly, and extremely gently," Rudolph said. The tank is so large that, as it was lowered, there was less than an inch of space between it and the solid rocket boosters. There are different challenges lifting the shuttle than the external tank, which was completed earlier this month. Nothing should change after that until the museum opens the payload bay doors in a few years when Endeavour is ready for public display, Rudolph said. Read more: Space shuttle Endeavour makes one more voyage to its final destination at a new space center
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The schedule could change because of weather, as strong winds would force a postponement of the move. And the sling will come off, and we'll say, 'Done,' " he said. It's believed that by Thursday, everything will be "hard mated, meaning everything will be torqued, bolted as it will be forever. Once that is done, everything will still need to be tightened, Rudolph said, but the move will effectively be complete. And several of the pieces inside the orbiter that it attaches to are very fragile, so they will do this very slowly." "It puts all the attached hardware in the right place on the orbiter. "It is extremely sensitive to get it in exactly the right position," Rudolph said. The second part will be to "capture" Endeavour to the external tank. "That's the part of lifting it into the building and getting it close to the orbiter," said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center. The first - the so-called "soft mate" - is scheduled to begin around 10 p.m.
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streets en route to the California Science Center. A 2012 file photo shows the space shuttle Endeavor on L.A.