The California Science Center announced Monday that construction has been completed on its new Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center, bringing the highly anticipated expansion one step closer to its public debut.
The culmination of a master project plan adopted in 1993, the sleek 20-story, 200,000-square-foot new building rising over Exposition Park will nearly double the museum’s exhibit space and anchor a $450-million campaign to permanently house the retired space shuttle Endeavour.
“I keep saying this, and it sounds cliché,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, the Science Center’s president and chief executive. “But it’s better than we ever dreamed.”
The Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center will be split into three galleries — air, space and shuttle — containing aerospace artifacts and hands-on exhibits demonstrating scientific principles.
At the heart of the new addition is Endeavour itself, displayed in a vertical “ready-to-launch” configuration that’s never been replicated with real hardware outside of a NASA or Air Force facility. The display includes rocket boosters from manufacturer Northrop Grumman and a massive external fuel tank from NASA.
A veteran of 25 missions from 1992 to 2011, Endeavour arrived in L.A. in 2012 during a widely watched journey atop a modified Boeing 747, followed by a slow procession through city streets. For over a decade, the retired orbiter was exhibited horizontally in a temporary, tent-like structure known as the Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion.
In early 2024, Angelenos watched as the shuttle was carefully lifted and placed into its final upright position in an intensive overnight operation.
With several observation areas spanning the nearly 200-foot tall shuttle stack, Rudolph said the new installation will offer visitors “views that almost no one’s ever seen.”
A cutting-edge building design by architectural firm ZGF Architects contributes to that awe-inspiring experience with a 2,000-ton curved structural framework of diagonally intersecting steel beams called a diagrid, which eliminates interior columns and allows visitors unobstructed views of the shuttle stack.
The idea is that “you don’t have a sense there’s a building at all,” said Ted Hyman, partner at ZGF Architects. Instead, you’re meant to feel like you’re standing on a launch pad outside. The dimness of the shuttle gallery also assists in the immersive fantasy, both as an artistic choice and a practical one due to the shuttle’s sensitivity to light.
Yet while the structure is designed to be undetectable from the inside, it’s a full-blown metallic colossus on the outside — visible from the surrounding L.A. freeways. Its colors are most magnificent at sunset.
When asked whether he’d had any doubts about the feasibility of the intricately choreographed construction project, Hyman replied, “I think up until about last week.”
Nonetheless, he said, “you forget about the challenges when you see the building done.”
Lynda Oschin, wife of the new air and space center’s titular philanthropist Samuel, called the project a “dream come true.”
“This space shuttle is everything rolled into one that my husband loved: astronomy, innovation, exploration, science, math and especially children,” Oschin said. “What this is going to do for the children is just incredible.”
The donor said her husband, whose picture is in the cockpit of the Endeavour, would have been very proud — if a little embarrassed — that his name is on the new building.
With the construction phase in the rearview, Rudolph said the center is now focused on completing installation of the galleries’ artifacts and hands-on installations. The Samuel Oschin Shuttle Gallery, which houses the Endeavour shuttle stack, is nearest to completion. In the two others, artifact installation is well underway.
The Korean Air Aviation Gallery explores the mechanics of flight and will display approximately 25 aircraft, from historical relics like the WWII “Vampire” jet to modern supersonic jet fighters. The Kent Kresa Space Gallery will feature a wide array of spacecraft, planetary probes, telescopes and more. Rudolph was especially excited about acquiring a SpaceX Cargo Dragon, which will further the air and space center’s goal to “show people that this isn’t all history.”
“There’s a lot of amazing things going on in aviation and space, and a lot of it happening in California,” the executive said.
The interactive installations complementing the artifacts include a 747 flight simulation and a 45-foot-long slide carrying visitors down to the bottom of the shuttle stack, which Rudolph himself has already ridden. His goal with these novelties was to both educate visitors about scientific principles and get children excited about the subject, which can get flattened in the traditional school system.
“Kids get turned off to science very early,” Rudolph said, but when they come to the science center, it’s like a whole new world opens up to them.
Rudolph said he expects to announce an opening date for the Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center this summer. He added that while it’s his intention to open by the 2028 L.A. Olympics, “we’re not really building this for a two-week athletic event.”
“We’re building this for the next 50 years to serve our community and inspire people,” he said.
As Rudolph made his way across the science center campus in March, he chuckled at the children bumping into him on their way to the exhibits.
“Future scientists, right?” he said.
The post California Science Center completes construction of new building housing Endeavour shuttle appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
