Space Shuttle Endeavour Flyovers for L.A. and S.F? Oh, Hell Yes

By: Pete Rosenzweig - Posted: September 14th, 2012 ˑ Filled under: Toys ˑ

Next Monday morning the Space Shuttle Endeavour, the baby of NASA’s fleet, leaves Kennedy Space Center for the last time. Strapped to the back of the Millennium Falcon (oh, one can dream – actually it will be fastened snugly to a 747 jumbo jet), Endeavour will make it’s way over the course of four days to it’s new home in Los Angeles.

Scheduled stops include Houston for a 2-day layover, as well as El Paso, followed by a stop in northern California at the Ames research center and then on to L.A. Thursday morning. Make no mistake: the most exciting component to this leg is the prospect of low-altitude fly-overs for the west coast in San Francisco (announced) and Los Angeles (not announced but likely). Now this past April might seem like ancient history but who can forget the awesome jet/shuttle flyovers in D.C. and New York? I for one was knocked sideways by all that kerfuffle and will be paying close attention to any sweet space treasure zipping over Los Angeles next week.

Another hotly anticipated chapter in this saga will be the shuttle’s 12-mile mosey down L.A.’s city streets from LAX to its final destination at the California Science Center on USC’s campus. The L.A. Times reports that 400 trees have been removed along the route to make the trek possible. Sadly the corridor between LAX and Exposition Park is one that could scarcely afford to lose 400 trees, but such is the price of a fancy funeral.

So as we embalm this national hardware and kiss goodbye the era of manned space exploration that it represents, I thought it would be appropriate to look back at some fabulous rockets (of a slightly smaller scale) that captured our hearts when space flight was new.

Enjoy the show.