Originally Posted by Space.com
Mother of all parades
Just as it did when it landed in California after seven of its 25 space missions, only in reverse, Endeavour will make its final cross country trip from Kennedy Space Center to Los Angeles atop a modified Boeing 747 airliner.
Once on the ground at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), the shuttle will hit the road for the science center.
"It is going to circle [flying above] the L.A. area three times and then we're going to have a parade. The mother of all parades!" Villaraigosa announced. "People will be lining up the street from LAX through the great city of Inglewood, down Martin Luther King Boulevard — it is going to be a sight to be seen."
At 122 feet (38 meters) long and with a wingspan of 78 feet (24 meters), the shuttle is a much wider load than usual Los Angeles traffic. The city and neighboring Inglewood will need to remove and replace street signs, traffic lights, trees and other obstacles along Endeavour's way. Even then, the 13 miles between the airport and CSC will still be a slow roll using a NASA-furnished "overland transporter" — a wheeled-trailer — for the road trip.
"It is going to be amazing watching this space shuttle inch its way through the streets, going instead of 17,500 miles an hour [like when it was in orbit], maybe 1 mile per hour," Mike Fincke, an astronaut on Endeavour's STS-134 final flight crew, told collectSPACE during a press conference at the science center. "It's going to be a really motivating day, I think, for all us to watch the space shuttle inch its way here."
"It's going to be like the Pied Piper leading the kids," Fincke added. "There are going to be so many people coming and getting inspired. I'm really enthused about it. I think the team here has done a lot of homework. They've got a lot of work to go but I think they are going to pull it off brilliantly."
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