Exposition Park exhibit takes one small step for all

Many can remember when the Endeavor Space Shuttle made its way from LAX, through Inglewood and angling its way around South Los Angeles pine trees on Martin Luther King Boulevard before stopping in Exposition Park.
“That was a “bring the community together moment,” it really was,” said Dr. Kenneth Phillips, “That was in 2012, when we moved it through the streets.”
Phillips, 75, is the curator for Aerospace Programs at the California Science Center, which held a “topping out” ceremony recently for the future Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center recently.
“It’s in a launch configuration now,” Phillips said. “That takes the solid rocket boosters, those white candlestick-looking things that are either side, plus that large, orange, external tank that carries the fuel that is actually feeding the engines on the shuttle as well. It’s an authentic stack and stands about 200 feet tall. It’s really fantastic.”
The stack has been sheathed in protective scaffolding, plywood and kevlar fabric throughout construction and for the event which celebrated a major expansion of the Science Center with a new building surrounding the shuttle. The complex diagrid enclosure, considered a unique addition to the city’s skyline, will be fully complete by the end of 2025.
In addition to preserving an important part of space exploration history, guests will have an unparalleled educational experience as they view Endeavour up close from multiple angles and elevations.
Phillips is in charge of the artifact and 100-exhibit installation that will surround the orbitor within the Air and Space Center. He is planning interactive educational areas, immersive collection experiences, digital touch screens, and hands-on, bilingual, graphic displays to encourage guests of all ages to investigate scientific and engineering principles of flight and space exploration.
The Air and Space Center will include three multi-level galleries: The Samuel Oschin Shuttle Gallery will reveal how the world’s first reusable spacecraft has helped scientists learn to live and work in low Earth orbit and prepare for bolder and more distant missions.
The Korean Air Aviation Gallery will explore how the pursuit of mastering the sky involves trade-offs among four forces of flight – lift, thrust, drag and weight – which affect every aircraft ever flown. And the Kent Kresa Space Gallery will examine how the machines we build to explore space help transform ideas about the universe.
Phillips has worked at the Center since 1990 and serves as principal contact with the Smithsonian Institution, NASA and the United States Air Force Museum.
It was Phillips who envisioned the display of a flown space shuttle orbiter and in 2009 authored the proposal that resulted in NASA’s award of space shuttle Endeavour to the Center in 2011. Today he is developing the exhibits for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center and he is also an Adjunct Professor of the Practice of Physics and Astronomy in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at USC, where he teaches a seminar, “The Space Shuttle and Our Place in the Universe,” and a course titled “Introduction to Astronomy” in the USC Prison Education Program.
“It’s a nice combination of two worlds,” Phillips said. “Kids have to know about this.”
Raised in Maryland, Phillips initially became excited about science when, at 11, he helped his physicist uncle move his high school laboratory from one room to another.
“It was a fascinating experience,” Phillips said. “It was a lab, so there were all kinds of apparatus, none of it particularly dangerous, but I had a lot of questions and it kinda sparked my interest in studying it further, so I majored in physics when I was in college.”
Construction workers; project partners; donors; stakeholders; along with volunteers and employees of the Science Center all took turns signing some of the site’s final steel beams, weighing about a ton each, before they were hoisted into position atop the 200,000-square-foot building and welded into place.
“My name is already on a beam up there,” Phillips said excitedly, pointing up to the diagrid surrounding Endeavour.
The framework structure of diagonally intersecting beams is self-supporting, eliminating the need for columns and allowing for a future, unobstructed view of Endeavor in the Samuel Oschin Shuttle Gallery.
“The California Science Center is fortunate to have a remarkable team that has helped us achieve this historic milestone,” Science Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rudolph,said. “Together, we’ve worked to create an iconic new landmark in Los Angeles that will inspire future generations of scientists, engineers and explorers.”
MATT Construction; ZGF architects; Arup, engineers; and Plas-Tal Manufacturing, steel fabricators, were involved in the planning operation.
The Air and Space Center will nearly double the California Science Center’s exhibition space, housing the world’s only complete stack of authentic space shuttle hardware.The Endeavour made 25 flights, traveling more than 122 million miles and orbiting the earth more than 4500 times.