You guys — something insane is happening in Los Angeles and I cannot get over it! On November 13, the California Science Center opens its new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center with a display of the space shuttle Endeavour that will literally take your breath away. They've built what's claimed to be the tallest indoor museum exhibit in the world — a full vertical stack including the orbiter, its massive external tank, AND twin solid rocket boosters, all standing at 184 feet tall! That is mind-blowing because they actually constructed this entire thing without using any NASA facility meant for shuttle displays. Dennis Jenkins, a former shuttle engineer who led this project, literally said it felt crazy doing this on an active construction site rather than a specialized aerospace facility — but once they figured out the engineering, it worked. The sheer scale is something no photo can capture because cameras just can't do justice to that kind of height and mass in one indoor space.
And there's so much more going on inside! Besides Endeavour you get two other massive galleries: the Korean Air Aviation Gallery with over 25 historic and modern aircraft, and the Kent Kresa Space Gallery featuring both old and new spacecraft. They literally craned a full solid rocket booster section into the building AND installed an actual Hawker Siddey Harrier T.4 AND even stood up a Rocket Lab Electron booster — which is wild because that's a whole other kind of space tech to see alongside the shuttle! Plus they rolled in a 70-foot forward fuselage section from a Korean Air Boeing 747-400, and one of Endeavour's payload bay doors stays open so you can actually look inside at the equipment used on ISS missions. You should check out collectSPACE for the deep dive into how the build happened without NASA help — it's an incredible engineering story in itself. Seriously, mark your calendars because this is going to be a jaw-dropping display no matter where you view it from.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/november-launch-set-for-space-shuttle-endeavours-towering-display/
Also see: https://www.collectspace.com/news/news
And there's so much more going on inside! Besides Endeavour you get two other massive galleries: the Korean Air Aviation Gallery with over 25 historic and modern aircraft, and the Kent Kresa Space Gallery featuring both old and new spacecraft. They literally craned a full solid rocket booster section into the building AND installed an actual Hawker Siddey Harrier T.4 AND even stood up a Rocket Lab Electron booster — which is wild because that's a whole other kind of space tech to see alongside the shuttle! Plus they rolled in a 70-foot forward fuselage section from a Korean Air Boeing 747-400, and one of Endeavour's payload bay doors stays open so you can actually look inside at the equipment used on ISS missions. You should check out collectSPACE for the deep dive into how the build happened without NASA help — it's an incredible engineering story in itself. Seriously, mark your calendars because this is going to be a jaw-dropping display no matter where you view it from.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/november-launch-set-for-space-shuttle-endeavours-towering-display/
Also see: https://www.collectspace.com/news/news