Welcome to Guard-Lee!

Guard-Lee, Inc is a custom fabrication business located in central Florida, USA, which specializes in the design and production of full scale space and aerospace replicas. The company also builds specialty exhibits and interactive devices, and it performs aerospace artifact restorations. This range of work is done by Guard-Lee for science centers, museums, private entities, film companies, NASA centers, defense contractors, and the U.S. military.

Payloads for Endeavour at California Science Center

During the month of October, 2014, Guard-Lee technicians worked with a California Science Center team lead by Dennis Jenkins, Project Director, to open Endeavour's Payload Bay doors, load replica and artifact Payload parts into the bay, and then close the doors over them. The payloads included a replica Airlock, a replica Tunnel Adapter pallet, replica tunnel segments, an artifact "Short Tunnel" segment, an artifact Spacehab with a replicated forward bulkhead, an artifact ICC cargo frame, and a replica RMS Canada Arm. Guard-Lee fabricated the replica pieces at its Apopka, Florida, shop and shipped them to Los Angeles as part of a sequenced installation operation. The CSC team included critical support supplied by former United Space Alliance Shuttle Technicians Jeff Moore, Cliff Semonski, and Tim Keyser, with rigging expertise supplied by LA Propoint's Lee Chuong and Justin Levin. Crane support was supplied by expert operators from Champion Crane. Guard-Lee technicians Tom Wilkes, Jack Marques, and Luis Pinero provided pre-assembly and preparation of the replicas. The operation was done in support of the Science Center's plan to provide a new facility for Endeavour that will depict the "Full Stack" configuration of the Space Transportation System (STS) with the Orbiter mounted vertically, attached to an External Tank/Solid Rocket Booster display. In this configuration, the port side Bay Door will be open to allow the payloads to be seen.