One of my biggest L.A. regrets? Letting the potential for traffic scare me away from seeing Space Shuttle Endeavour paraded across the city’s surface streets. So in the 13 years since, I’ve tried to steep myself in as many space-centric happenings as possible—and I have to say, this latest development should have Angelenos very excited.
As the California Science Center nears the completion of construction on the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center—where you’ll be able to see Endeavour in a vertical, ready-to-launch position—the Exposition Park institution has begun to install the 100 artifacts that’ll fill its air and space museum expansion.
Specifically, on Tuesday I was invited for a sneak peek of the first three pieces to be placed in the still-in-progress Kent Kresa Space Gallery: a 59-foot-tall Electron launch vehicle from Rocket Lab, a nearly-complete space shuttle main engine and a solid rocket booster segment—that’s been to space and back—that visitors will be able to walk through. (Oh, and if you’re wondering when? Stay tuned: The California Science Center says that next year it’ll announce an opening date.)
If you’ve been by the museum lately, you’ve probably seen the metallic exterior that’s enveloped Endeavour, specifically the pinnacle-like Samuel Oschin Shuttle Gallery that houses the 20-story display. But that’s only part of the museum expansion: On the western side of the building you’ll encounter planes in the Korean Air Aviation Gallery and human spacecraft, robots, telescopes and rockets inside the Kent Kresa Space Gallery. As Kenneth Phillips, the museum’s aerospace programs curator puts it, “It’s the gallery that’s going to show people why we explore the universe in the way that we do.”
Once inside the three-floor Kent Kresa Space Gallery (named after the major museum donor and former chairman and CEO of Northrop Grumman) the first thing I encountered was the Rocket Labs Electron rocket. Second only to SpaceX in private launches, the Long Beach company has sent these orbital rockets loaded with satellites into space over 70 times—though this particular flight-ready model has never left Earth. A central staircase in the gallery winds around the vehicle, so visitors will be able to scope it out from up close along all three levels (each floor will focus on a different subject area, including human flight, rocket science and robotic spacecraft exploration and telescopes).
Up on the rocket-filled third floor, that’s where you’ll also find a 95% complete main engine from the Space Shuttle program. (You know the three conical engines that sit toward the tail of the shuttle? That’s what you’re looking at here.) You can get remarkably close to the engine and gawk at the dizzying array of tubes, pumps and valves attached to it.
I think the most awe-inspiring artifact to see here, though, is a cutaway segment of a solid rocket booster—an assembly of four previously-flown pieces that have collectively helped propel more than 20 Space Shuttle missions into low Earth orbit. At 12 feet in diameter (nearly the height of DTLA’s 2nd Street Tunnel, to provide a comparison), the booster made me feel downright diminutive. Though I was only able to walk through a gap between the segments, the completed exhibit will allow visitors to walk inside and through the roughly 30-foot slice—a mere fifth of the length of the full 149-foot-tall boosters that you’ll find flanking Endeavour. I stood at the base of those towering boosters in the middle of the museum’s “Go for Stack” process in the fall of 2023, but I found them so monumental that it was difficult to truly comprehend the scale. But being able to place yourself literally inside of this booster inside the Kent Kresa Space Gallery really cements the colossal scope of the shuttle-propelling boosters.