Houston Chronicle: Texas lawmakers press NASA for a “real” space shuttle for display in Houston

Posted by Loree Thompson in In The News, NASA

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Forty-two members of Congress — led by Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land – are pressing NASA to take a second look at a controversial decision to hand over the retired space shuttle Enterprise to a river front museum in New York City rather than awarding the test-bed spacecraft to the visitors center adjacent to Houston’s Johnson Space Center.

Olson enlisted 25 Texans and House members from six other states to write NASA administrator Charles Bolden.

Their letter questioned the space agency’s initial allocation of the shuttle Enterprise to an aviation and maritime museum centered on a World War II aircraft carrier that played a marginal role in the manned space program.

The lawmakers said the USS Intrepid Museum had abandoned promises to NASA to house the Enterprise in a glass building on a riverside pier adjacent to a supersonic passenger jet known as Concorde.

Instead, the Intrepid Museum has submitted a revised plan to NASA that calls for the Enterprise to be displayed in what is now a parking lot across busy West Side Highway from the Intrepid. The museum must buy the land and win a zoning change to build the newly envisioned display space.

The change in plans demands that NASA review its April 12 decision to allocate Enterprise to New York City, the lawmakers told Bolden.

Bolden should “expeditiously review recipients’ financial, logistical and curatorial display plans;” track recipient sites’ payments and “minimize the possibility of delays in the (shuttle) delivery schedule” beyond 2012, the lawmakers urged.

“Congress will hold NASA accountable for the necessary and appropriate transfer of the shuttle orbiters to locations that will uphold the criteria set forth in the original NASA authorization bill that outlined the proper display and access by U.S. taxpayers to visit the shuttle orbiters,” the lawmakers wrote.

American taxpayers “deserve to know” whether the Intrepid Museum will fulfill promises to NASA “before any further action is taken with respect to locating Enterprise at the Intrepid,” the lawmakers said.

Olson launched his effort just days after Space Center Houston privately arranged to obtain an exhibition model of the shuttle known as Explorer from the Kennedy Space Center visitors’ center.

The mock-up shuttle will be moved to Houston as early as the end of 2012, said Richard Allen Jr, president of Space Center Houston.


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