Photo courtesy of NASA.
Space shuttle Endeavour has never been the greenest of projects — I mean, consider how much gas it takes to circle the planet 4,600 times. Sure, blah blah the majesty of the final frontier, but that thing’s tailpipe makes a Chinese factory look like a wind turbine. Now, even in retirement, Endeavour is managing to come up with new things to hate on, because its final journey will kill 400 trees.
The trees will be cut down on the shuttle’s behalf so it may make its way from Los Angeles International Airport to Los Angeles’ Exposition Park, 12 miles away, where it will be displayed for the foreseeable future. Officials have promised to put up twice as many in their place, and that’s very nice, but here’s the thing — new trees are a lot smaller than old trees. It takes a serious fuckload of time for a new tree to provide the shade and beauty which an old tree manages to provide very easily.
City officials and the science center are “hoping the historical significance of housing the shuttle will offset the tree loss,” according to the Los Angeles Times. But they are probably not going to let you sit and read your book under Endeavour.
