Space Shuttle Endeavour's California Flyover & Final Flight,This Thursday Morning

[Asimovian]

Sorry for the poor quality, but here are my photos from the 40th Floor of Downtown LA.

[blondebear]

The shuttle was plainly visible from the rooftop at work, but too far away for a good picture. https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/gIs6_FDWiJ7EU9UUgj7OatMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0
My brother, on the other hand, got this shot from his office in Hollywood: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/jWXaqfdTDfsRxpygrf8w_9MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0

[Bullitt]

In Sunnyvale I had a great view. It flew over Moffett, then flew directly over my office bldg where I was on the roof.

It was very cool to see.

When I post my pics I’ll share the link.

[Rick]

@Gatopescado

This sounds like a neat thing to see, but I cannot express my disgust strongly enough about the decision to *cut down trees *along the route to get it to the museum. :mad:

So wrong!

According to the Endeavor fact sheet the trees slated for removal were planned to be removed anyway, and they are replanting more trees than are being removed.

In the City of Inglewood, 128 trees are slated to be removed and replaced with 256
new trees. We are replacing trees that are not consistent with the city’s Master Plan
with higher quality trees consistent with Inglewood’s Master Plan. The Science
Center Foundation is donating more than 500,000 worth of greening improvements to the City of Inglewood. In the City of Los Angeles, 265 trees are slated to be removed and replaced with 530 new trees. The Science Center Foundation is donating well over 1 million worth of
greening improvements to the City of Los Angeles.
The vast majority of trees being removed in Los Angeles are small trees less than 15
feet tall or have a trunk diameter at breast height (DBH) less than 12 inches. Fifty-four of the trees to be removed are large trees, five of which will be transplanted.
• Many of these large trees to be removed are invasive trees that are causing street
damage or posing safety hazards to the public wherever possible. After we remove
them to make way for the Endeavour, our team will replace them, two to one, where
indicated by civic agencies, at no cost to the cities, with urban-friendly trees.

Sounds like a win win to me.

[Rick]

[shameless plug] Hey So Cal dopers, want to have a dopefest/shuttle viewing party?[/shameless plug]

[suranyi]

I’m going to be in Los Angeles for Thanksgiving weekend so I already have my tickets to see Endeavour on that Friday. (You can buy timed tickets at the museum’s web site.)

[Yumblie]

There were a bunch of people on top of Nob Hill in SF standing in the street watching for the shuttle. We saw it multiple times through the buildings in each direction as it circled the city. Many of them were tourists walking out of their hotel wondering what everyone was staring at. Quite a fun morning!

[Senegoid]

I posted this in the nearby thread “What can you not find on the Internet” but it is on the subject of this thread too.

I can’t find the goddamn space shuttle on the Internet!

Yes you read that right. I probably shouldn’t re-post the whole post here, but here’s an excerpt:

@Senegoid

I’ll tell y’all what the fucking shit I didn’t find on the Internet.

I didn’t find any goddamn trace of a hint of a clue of a mention what route the space shuttle was going to fly from Los Angeles to Sacramento and back today. Neither in the week before the event nor afterward today. (Finding out beforehand would have been nice.) Flying from LA to Sacto, did it fly over the San Joaquin Valley? Did it fly over (or near) Bakersfield? Tehachapi? Fresno? Modesto? Stockton? Livermore/Dublin area?

Or did it just, you know, magically teleport itself all that way without actually passing over points in between? And heading back south, did it fly over San Jose? Santa Cruz? San Luis Obispo? Santa Maria? Santa Barbara? (I did find a few news reports suggesting, ahead of time, that it might fly over San Jose, Santa Cruz, and/or Monterey.)

<snip>

Are there any SDMB Dopers in any of those forgotten lands who know? Or who maybe even saw the damn phantom?

[Bullitt]

In Sunnyvale, our 6-story office building is one of the tallest. From the rooftop we saw several other rooftops with people watching. Overpasses also had a few people.

[user_hostile]

In college, I remember hearing the sonic boom when the first Space Shuttle flight passed overhead on its way to Edwards for a landing with pilots Crippen and Young.

I Googled for some kind of flight plan–but finally concluded that Twitter would be my best source. About 25 minutes after Monterey sighting, I went outside and about three minutes later, emerging through the haze—there it was, about three miles away roughly 2000 - 3000 feet (?) in the air.

The Shuttle/747 and an F-15(?) escort (heading east) then started turning south to make a fly-by @ Vandenberg AFB. Immediately after the sighting, I sent a text message to an elementary school teacher in Santa Barbara giving her a heads up of about 10 - 15 minutes.

It was an educated guess–I didn’t know if it would fly by or not. :dubious:

20 minutes later I get a text back: “We had no idea when it would fly by–thanks to you, most of the school got to see it–Directly overhead!”

[Bumbershoot]

I know this thread has been dormant but it seemed like the best place to post this: an article that features a satellite photo of Endeavour, written by our old friend the Bad Astronomer!

The photo was taken shortly before the Las Cruces NM flyover, which is where I saw it. I thought some of you might be interested.

[Bullitt]

Cool, thanks for sharing.

I was still talking about this in the office today. A friend / coworker living in Tucson AZ got to see it, too, the day before the Moffett Field flyover. For the flyover timing, we got better info from Twitter than from any other source.