SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR HOISTED FOR DISPLAY IN LAUNCH CONFIGURATION AT LOS ANGELES SCIENCE MUSEUM

NASA's retired space shuttle Endeavour was carefully hoisted this week and attached to a huge external fuel tank and its two solid rocket boosters at a Los Angeles museum where it will be uniquely displayed as if it is about to blast off.

A massive crane delicately moved the orbiter, which is 122 feet (37 meters) long and has a 78-foot (24-meter) wingspan, into the partially built Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at the California Science Center in Exposition Park.

Crews then attached Endeavour, covered in a protective wrapping, to the tank in a process that lasted into the predawn hours Tuesday. The building will be completed around Endeavour before the display opens to the public.

"This is a huge morning for us now," said Jeffrey N. Rudolph, president and CEO of the science center, who estimated it will take up to two years to finish the project.

"The scale of it is something that really amazes people," he said. "Everyone who sees it, even those who've seen the shuttle before, they say wow." The 20-story-tall display stands atop an 1,800ton (1,633-metric ton) concrete slab supported by six so-called base isolators to protect Endeavour from earthquakes.

All parts of the vertical launch configuration are authentic components of the shuttle system, including the rust-colored external tank, which was flight-qualified.