Endeavor Launch Pad Being Rebuilt Piece By Piece

dangle writes "The Exposition Park museum in LA is working to rebuild the Endeavor launch stack, a display that will take thousands of pieces to complete due to parts that are scattered at NASA facilities, museums and other places across the U.S. Most are one of a kind and impossible to replicate. Dennis Jenkins, who spent his entire 30-plus year career sending the shuttles into space, is playing a key role in locating essential parts using his own and his colleagues' institutional memory. Employed by NASA contractor Martin Marietta, he helped write the software used in loading and controlling the liquid oxygen needed to launch the 2,250-ton shuttle assembly into low Earth orbit. Now, with the program part of a bygone era of exploration, the 57-year-old works for the California Science Center, helping officials figure out how to rebuild Endeavour."

Comments

It will certainly confuse future archaeologists

[Anonymous Coward]

Thousands of years from now archaeologists will uncover the previously unknown LA launch site and will confuse the hell out of them.

"The discovery of this launch site is extraordinary in that we never knew of this location being used for launching the Space Shuttle. It doesn't appear in any NASA records we're found so perhaps this was a top-secret location. We are, however, puzzled as to why they would have a launch facility in the middle of such a large sprawling city. One theory we have is that this was a decoy launch site used to confuse the Japanese during the second world war. This finding may rewrite history!"

Re:"Impossible to replicate"

[OzPeter]

Some of the more stressed components might find suitable low quality substitutes given that we will NEVER load the fuel or try and launch.

Until the day comes when the plucky hero/heroine realizes that a "nearly ready to launch" Space Shuttle is located at Exposition Park museum in LA, which will do very nicely for ramming the mother ship of the baby elephants, thereby forcing them into submission.

Re: Missing is the "why" here.

[djlemma]

You... don't really get "museums," do you? They're trying to preserve history. Are you really saying a museum shouldn't try to use the original historic parts when they're available, just because it's harder to acquire a few of them? Do you really think middle schoolers are the best metric to rate the value of a preservation effort?

Re:Shuttle was OK, I suppose.

[scotts13]

Here is - quite literally - a fu*king rocket scientist devoting his time and energy NOT towards building a better world or improving the advancement of our society. Instead, he's spearheading a massive effort to construct a self-congratulatory museum-piece.

If you want a textbook illustration for the meaning of "decadence" in the context of a civilization, you can read it in the above.

This rocket scientist has had his career, he's put in his 30. If he wants to devote his retirement to helping make sure people don't forget what we were once capable of, more power to him.

Re:When I see this...

[djlemma]

You know a woodpecker once delayed a shuttle lunch by a month, right?

Re:Cargo cult?

[gerardrj]

That's the rub... the museum can rais $250M to install a shuttle exhibit but if you asked those same people to pay that much in taxes that was guaranteed to go to NASA they would balk.
Most people labor under the false impression that NASA has a tremendous budget, perhaps almost as large as the military budget when in reality NASA's portion of US spending is about .75% of the total budget (historically it has been as high as 4.5% and is currently about .5%). If the government as a whole could operate as efficiently as NASA does we'd have solved world hunger, provided free healthcare to all Americans, and have free mass transit in every city.
Over the SST program lifespan NASA spend about $192B on the entire thing. For comparison: the US Air Force's F-35 program is expected to cost $857B over its life span (figure you need to double that to get to the number we'll actually wind up at).
The US spends about $220B on interest payments, so we could re-build the entire SST program for the price of 1 year of interest payments!