Hitchin' A Ride
Space Shuttle Endeavour was hitched to a silver Toyota Tundra CrewMax half-ton pickup to cross the 405 Freeway on its two day trip from LAX airport to the California Science Center (CSC).
According to Toyota, the truck was not modified. In a few hours, I will be on my way from Tokyo to Los Angeles. I will meet up with Editor Emeritus Ed Niedermeyer to do a “from the truck bed” review of the Toyota Tundra CrewMax half-ton pickup. Stay tuned.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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I am going to guess that the transmission gears and rear end are all cryo-treated and shot-peened and magna-fluxed and all that good stuff. No way would this be a 'off the showroom floor' truck. The backlash and bad publicity which would result if the truck blows out the rear end would be far outweigh any good publicity that would come from a successful pull.
Who cares. I live in Boston, but am more interested in the plight of property owners whose mature trees were razed by the hundreds to make way for Endeavor. (The promised replacements, while better than saplings, are just 10-14 feet tall.) Why not detach the wings from the shuttle and reattach them at the museum? It's not like the thing's ever going to fly again anyway. I'm far from an environmentalist (for one, I refuse to drive four cylinder cars), but the waste involved in this shuttle move is ridiculous.
WOuld love to see some of the haters show up at the San Antonio plant in Texas and shoot their mouth off to the folks working the lines building these trucks. I dare ya.
When or if,I'm ever seeking to move a large spacecraft,a ship,an ICBM,or any kind of very large,metal object,I'm gonna say now that I'm more inclined to purchase a Toyota to accomplish this task.Assuming no Toyotas were used to remove any of the 400 healthy trees quickly dispatched by classifying the space shuttle as a house moving,speeding things up to everyone's convenience.It is, after all,just a space freighter-chop it up & reassemble it on site.C'mon,you mean we need to keep it space worthy in case of aliens? Its not like its an SR-71, or De Havilland Comet.