Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center Opens With 200-Foot Shuttle Hall for Endeavour
Updated
Updated · arup.com · Jan 1
Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center Opens With 200-Foot Shuttle Hall for Endeavour
3 articles · Updated · arup.com · Jan 1
Summary
Los Angeles’ Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center has been completed as the California Science Center’s final master-plan phase, giving Space Shuttle Endeavour a permanent vertical display in a ready-to-launch configuration.
The centerpiece is a roughly 200-foot-tall, column-free shuttle gallery built around the full stack—Endeavour, external tank and two solid rocket boosters—using a tapered steel diagrid to preserve unobstructed views.
A 500,000-pound shuttle stack posed the project’s biggest engineering challenge, leading designers to place it on a base-isolated concrete support with six triple-friction pendulum bearings to limit earthquake forces.
Performance-based fire studies and computational fluid dynamics modeling also let the exposed steel remain visible and shaped targeted ventilation for visitor areas instead of conditioning the entire 20-story volume.
The new center combines the shuttle, aviation and space galleries, expanding the Science Center’s long-term effort to make flight and space engineering more accessible to visitors.