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After slow final voyage, Endeavour at new home

(CBS/AP) When the space shuttle Endeavour finally touched down in Los Angeles' Exposition Park Sunday, nobody seemed to mind that it was 15 hours late.

"In some ways I think the delays are a blessing in disguise," Yves Sergile told correspondent Ben Tracy. "More and more people have been able to come out."

Yves and Kara Sergile brought their daughter Genieve, who monitored the shuttle's approach on her iPad. "It's really big!" she said of the 122-foot-long orbiter.

Yet this endeavour also became a big ordeal. It took more than 60 hours to travel 12 miles from LAX to the Science Center. Here on Earth, the space shuttle simply ran out of space. Its 78-foot wingspan came within a credit card's width of buildings and powerline poles.

Crews rushed ahead, trimming trees and raising electrical wires, trying to keep it on the move. The city had already cut down 400 trees and elevated 100 power lines, but it wasn't enough.

As the crowds grew (and often blocked its way), the shuttle could have used a booster rocket. It slowed to just 1 mile per hour. Then a planned two-hour maintenance stop stretched to five when hydraulics on the transporter started leaking.

Yet all those problems simply gave more people more time to gaze at space history.

The space shuttle Endeavour is moved to the California Science Center, Saturday, Oct. 13, 2012 in Los Angeles. AP Photo/Lucy Nicholson

Endeavour also got to see some L.A. landmarks. It passed by Randy's Doughnut Shop, passed over the infamous 405 freeway, and passed time outside of a strip mall.

In the final stretch it zig-zagged down Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard, navigating a wall of pine trees on its way to its final resting place.

Apparently Endeavour was struggling with the idea of retirement, but it ended up at the California Science Center without a single scratch. Its final mission: Now complete.

"It's just a crazy thing that we did but we pulled it off," said Kenneth Philips, curator of aerospace science at the museum.

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Movers had planned a slow trip, saying the shuttle that once orbited at more than 17,000 mph would move at just 2 mph in its final voyage through Inglewood and southern Los Angeles.

But that estimate turned out to be generous, with Endeavour often creeping along at a barely detectable pace when it wasn't at a dead stop due to difficult-to-maneuver obstacles like tree branches and light posts.

Despite the holdups, the team charged with transporting the shuttle felt a "great sense of accomplishment" when it made it onto the museum grounds, said Jim Hennessy, a spokesman for Sarens, the contract mover.

"It's historic and will be a great memory," he said. "Not too many people will be able to match that — to say, 'We moved the space shuttle through the streets of Inglewood and Los Angeles."'

Transporting Endeavour cross-town was a costly feat with an estimated price tag of $10 million, to be paid for by the science center and private donations.

Late Friday, crews spent hours transferring the shuttle to a special, lighter towing dolly for its trip over Interstate 405. The dolly was pulled across the Manchester Boulevard bridge by a Toyota Tundra pickup, and the car company filmed the event for a commercial after paying for a permit, turning the entire scene into a movie set complete with special lighting, sound and staging.

Saturday started off promising, with Endeavour 90 minutes ahead of schedule. But accumulated hurdles and hiccups caused it to run hours behind at day's end.

Some 400 trees had been removed along the route, but officials said most of the trees that gave them trouble could not be cut down because they were old or treasured for other reasons, including some planted in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

The crowd had its problems, too. Despite temperatures in the mid-70s, several dozen people were treated for heat-related injuries after a long day in the sun, according to fire officials.

But it was a happy, peaceful crowd, with firefighters having only to respond to a sheared hydrant and a small rubbish fire, and no reports of any arrests.

At every turn of Endeavour's slow-speed commute through urban streets, spectators jammed intersections as the shuttle shuffled past stores, schools, churches and front yards through the working-class streets of southern Los Angeles. Sidewalks were off-limits due to Endeavour's enormous wingspan.

Endeavour's arrival in Los Angeles was a homecoming. It may have zipped around the Earth nearly 4,700 times, but its roots are solidly grounded in California. Its main engines were fashioned in the San Fernando Valley. The heat tiles were invented in Silicon Valley. Its "fly-by-wire" technology was developed in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey. In 1991, it rolled off the assembly line in the Mojave Desert to replace Challenger, which blew up during liftoff in 1986.

It was scheduled to go on display starting Oct. 30.

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