endeavour space shuttle endeavour space shuttle

The same type of isolators are part of the way that Endeavour will be kept safe in the vertical configuration, though the preparations and complexities involved are greater. 'We went through and looked at the surveillance cameras, and there was no movement - or at least, none that we could perceive.' 'The only one that I remember was the largest one,' said Jenkins. And one, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake in 2019, was felt by as many as 30 million people spanning the length of the state.

Five of those events were violent enough to cause minor damage. Since that day, Caltech's Southern California Earthquake Data Center has recorded 7,383 times the the ground shook strongly enough that people in the area might feel it. In the case of a powerful earthquake, the shuttle would only glide gently back and forth, having been separated from the ground. When Endeavour was rolled into its pavilion at the end of a three-day road trip in October 2012, it was mounted atop four friction-pendulum seismic isolators. (Image credit: California Science Center) 7,383 is a pile of rubble,' Dennis Jenkins, director of the science center's project to display Endeavour and a former NASA space shuttle engineer, said in an interview with .Ī lot of research and technology stands behind Jenkins' answer, providing the confidence for he and his team to go forward with stacking the towering display.Īrtist rendering of the space shuttle Endeavour inside the California Science Center's Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. 'Suffice it to say that the building and Endeavour will be standing when L.A. Now, as the California Science Center takes the first steps to stack the vehicle with a pair of twin solid rocket boosters and an external fuel tank for a vertical, launchpad-like permanent exhibit inside the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, the question has only increased in magnitude. Even before it opened more than a decade ago, the exhibit of NASA's retired space shuttle Endeavour in Los Angeles has elicited one question perhaps more than any other: Can it survive an earthquake?Īnd to think, that was while the winged orbiter was displayed near the ground in its horizontal, landing configuration.

Endeavour space shuttle endeavour space shuttle