Endeavour Opens to Public on October 30

I got a "sneak preview" today. It was really cool. ;D

This is the first view of Endea-vour, as you walk into the hanger. It's big, of course. And a little dark. I had to push the ISO up to 400. For shots of the belly, even at 3200 it was dark. Ended up going with a flash for most of them.

This is Endea-vour from the port side. The general flow they expect is you'll walk around and across, and exit from this side. There's also a little sales area near here, with mostly kid-sized NASA-like gear.

I had a friend at the Observa-tory who had an authentic tile. He was able to find where it came from by matching the number (and knowing the general area where it would be located). It's like a giant jigsaw puzzle, with nearly every tile a unique size-shape combination.

The tiles are surpris-ingly fragile, despite their ability to insulate the shuttle on reentry. Here, it looks like the movers dropped it a bit. Wouldn't have taken much for that ding, considering the size and weight of the shuttle.

Some day in the future, Endea-vour will stand as ready for launch, complete with mock ups of the external fuel tank and the solid (fuel) rocket boosters.

Information on seeing the space shuttle can be had at California Science Center's website, linked above.