Missoula men help move shuttle - Montana Standard [fornadablog.blogspot.com]

Missoula men help move shuttle - Montana Standard [fornadablog.blogspot.com]

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[fornadablog.blogspot.com], Missoula men help move shuttle - Montana Standard

2012-10-21T08:52:00Z Missoula men help move shuttleBy Jenna Cederberg of the Missoulian Mtstandard.com

MISSOULA (AP) â€" The Missoula engineers in charge of squeezing space shuttle Endeavour through the crowded streets of Los Angeles used every trick in their extensive playbook to get the job done.

“There’s lots of places you would not have wanted to have your finger between the orbiter and trees or poles,” Gordon Lofts said Monday. “There were some incredibly close tolerances. Luckily, we had a very experienced and skilled crew that was able to get it done.”

Several times during last weekend’s move, the shuttle’s 78-foot wingspan was wider than the route ahead, forcing operators to accommodate for as much as 1 1/2 feet of space. Other times, enthusiastic crowds of spectators gathered to watch the historic move had to be shooed away as operators scoped the route for the best path around the next obstacle.

“A lot of places, you’d have to get one wing through an obstruction â€" it would have to clear the obstruction before the other wing could get through,” Steve Mitchell said.

It took a crew of thousands almost three days to coax Endeavour along the 14-mile route from Los Angeles International Airport to its permanent home at the California Science Center. Endeavour left LAX late Thursday night and arrived at the museum Sunday night.

On Monday morning, Mitchell, Gordon Lofts and Mike Lofts â€" all of Missoula â€" worked in the shadow of the shuttle as they prepared it to be taken off the trailers that ferried it through south L.A.

The three experienced trailer operators were among a handful of people from Sarens International’s Missoula office who helped move Endeavour. Sarens was contracted as the transporter for the move, and employees worked for months planning and engineering the route.

During the move, Endeavour barely went faster than 2 mph.

The trailers that Sarens’ operators used aren’t made for going more than

5 mph. They’re run via a wireless remote that talks to power packs and computers throughout the trailer to help it go up, down, left or right, Gordon Lofts said.

The remote is controlled by one operator who is consulting two other operators scouting along the route. Sarens provided 24-hour monitoring of the move. Trailer operators worked groups of three on 12-hour shifts throughout the move.

Each of the trailer operators has at least a decade of experience moving unusually large objects through tight spaces.

“All that was training for this â€" we used all the training we knew,” Lofts said.

Endeavour flew 25 space missions and was the replacement for the Challenger shuttle, which exploded in 1986, killing the seven-member crew. Endeavour flew its last mission in 2011. Gordon Lofts and Mike Lofts witnessed that launch from a job site in southern Florida.

The significance of the move made it an unforgettable experience, they said.

They likened the shuttle’s travel through the city to a parade route, teeming with people day and night. Some had parties to celebrate the shuttle’s passage. Others wore costumes and waved signs.

When the shuttle inched past a particularly difficult obstruction, the crowd went wild, Mike Lofts said.

“When you’re sitting there working an obstruction and you finally get by, the whole crowd is just erupting and cheering,” he said. “You had multiple of those. You get by (an obstruction) and you move again â€" the crowd goes wild. It’s like you’re at a concert,” Mike Lofts said.

Despite the shuttle’s ability to blast through the Earth’s atmosphere and orbit the planet at speeds of up to 17,000 mph, the Sarens crew quickly discovered it was a delicate piece of machinery.

“Bottom tiles are made of glass â€" they thought our heads were softer than the hard hats so we had to take the hard hats off while working under it,” Mitchell said.

In the end, the Sarens crew got the shuttle to the California Science Center without any dents or dings, although it was about 10 hours late. That was because of several unexpected obstacles â€" from trees to utility poles to crowds â€" along the route.

Again, the crew credited experience and the thousands of other people who helped in the move as the key to finishing the job.

The high-profile move got the Missoula men quite a bit of media

attention.

Father-and-son pair Gordon and Mike Lofts were interviewed for almost an hour by a crew from CBS. That interview was boiled down to “two to three seconds” of air time on the national broadcast Friday night, Gordon Lofts said.

Mitchell was quoted in a Los Angeles Times story about on the move. And they’re all in hundreds of photos taken of the shuttle during the move.

All agreed moving the Endeavour was the highest-profile job they’ll ever take on.

There still are days of work left before the Endeavour job is done, Lofts said. Nonetheless, the operators count the route as the shuttle’s 26th successful “mission.” They’ll all receive patches made by the California Science Center commemorating the final mission.

The California Science Center is

set to open its Endeavour exhibit on

Oct. 30.

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