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Start Saving To Buy Your Space Shuttle Now
stoolpigeon writes "With the retirement of the shuttle drawing near, NASA has begun to plan for museums that may want a used orbiter of their own. The Orlando Sentinel reports that NASA issued an RFI to US educational institutions, science museums and other organizations to see if they would be interested in the orbiter while also able to cover the estimated $42 million cost of 'safeing' the shuttle and transporting it."
a Shuttle weighs 4.5 million pounds with a maximum payload weight of approximately 50,000 pounds
That's for the entire stack - orbiter, boosters, and full external tank. The orbiter itself has an empty weight of about 180,000 lb. So you're looking for a launcher that can put 200,000lb or so into orbit; there are only a couple: Saturn V, Energia, and the shuttle (remember, the orbiter goes into orbit too, plus whatever it's carrying).
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Yup, the initial $42 million is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the shuttle: "the average cost per flight has been about $1.3 billion over the life of the program and about $750 million over its most recent five years of operations." (cite). I don't know whether that $1.3 billion is inflation adjusted - a very real consideration when a fair amount of the cost was up front in the late 1970s.