Review: One of the greatest museum artifacts ever is at L.A.'s $450 million Air and Space center

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Set us as preferred Few of us living in Southern California fully grasp the pivotal role the area has played in the history of flight and space travel.It boasted about two-thirds of the nation’s aircraft companies by the end of World War II and later birthed moon-bound Apollo spacecraft and the Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour space shuttles.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge is still where many of NASA’s robotic space missions are built and operated, and SpaceX has forged most of its rockets and spacecraft in Hawthorne.Our region specializes in another kind of escape too: entertainment.At the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, the $450-million, 200,000-square-foot expansion of the California Science Center, which opens to the public on Nov.

13, our expertise in cosmonautics and creativity converge to produce a blockbuster — a people-pleasing, action-packed popcorn flick that’s a foil to the city’s newest museums such as LACMA’s indie art house and Lucas’ sci-fi saga.The center, with its galleries dedicated to aviation, space exploration and the shuttle program, turns the miracle of flight into theater, building to a dazzling denouement: the space shuttle Endeavour, with its solid rocket boosters and enormous external tank displayed in launch-ready position for the first time.The drama begins in a darkened room, where a film created by J.J.Abrams’ production company, Bad Robot, transports you into the rousing, aggressively optimistic world of space travel, with its grainy footage, scratchy voices and real-life heroes.

Then the shuttle appears on screen, the music swells and the room shakes with the tearing, rumbling force of a launch.The music resolves and smoke rolls into the gallery before the screen opens up and the real Endeavour gleams in the distan...