Space Shuttle Endeavor will eventually reside at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. But to get it there, the city has to cut down some 400 trees. It promises it will replace them with 800 new trees. Uh huh. New trees that won’t mature in the lifetime of those residents. I’m afraid my appreciation of U.S. space memorabilia would have ended where those 400 trees began.
Arg. What a tough decision! 400 trees, or the space shuttle Endeavor. Oh man… I can’t decide. Are the trees pretty old? Maybe this is a good time to replant them anyway. Still, that’s a lot of trees. The city just isn’t going to look the same for a long time. Okay, how about this. We move the building. Or wait! I’ve got it. We put the shuttle in a separate building outside the trees and then build an underground tram from the CSC to the shuttle building. We can even use space shuttle looking seats in the tram to emphasize the experience, and treat the whole thing like a ride. That way we can charge extra and pay for the tunnel!
Now that’s one possible solution that wasn’t mentioned in the article. Build a new dedicated site for the shuttle in a place they could get to without chopping down all those trees. Lots of museums have multiple sites. Personally I don’t know why they couldn’t have disassembled the shuttle to move it. So what if a few heat tiles were damaged; it’s not like the thing is ever going to fly again.