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Lacking Buyers, NASA Cuts Prices On Shuttles and Old Engines
Hugh Pickens writes "Russia's Space Shuttle, Buran, ended its days at a theme park in Moscow and was once offered for sale on the Internet for 3 million dollars. Now the NY Times reports that when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration put out the call in December 2008 seeking buyers for US shuttles from museums, schools and elsewhere, the agency didn't get as much interest as expected, so now NASA has slashed the price of the 1970s-era spaceships, available for sale this fall once their flying days are over, from $42 million to just $28.8 million apiece. 'We're confident that we'll get other takers,' says agency spokesman Mike Curie. The Discovery is already promised to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum but the Atlantis and the Endeavour are still up for grabs and it is possible that the Enterprise, a shuttle prototype that never made it to space, will also be available. The lower price is based on NASA's estimate of the cost for transporting a shuttle from Kennedy Space Center to a major airport, and for displaying it indoors in a climate-controlled building. As for the space shuttle main engines, those are now free. NASA advertised them in December 2008 for $400,000 to $800,000 each, but no one expressed interest. So now the engines are available, along with other shuttle artifacts, for the cost of transportation and handling."
One free shuttle engine.
One old impala.
Mythbusters
Best Show EVER!
'nuff said.
Ezekiel 23:20
We dont want this happening again..
PS. Free Shuttle parts for the cost of transport?! Please, will somebody in the know confirm you don't have to be some large educational institution or venerable museum? ;)
Confirmed. And if you have Amazon Prime, it's free 2-day shipping.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
There's a company up the 101 in the valley that owns the complete mockup that was built for SpaceCamp. That single model has been enough for every LA film, TV show or other for the past 20 years or so; there really isn't a high demand for shuttle flight deck interior scenes. The set is actually a lot MORE intereting than the actual fligt deck, IMHO, since they never updated it with EFIS and it still has all of the original analogue gauges and gear (all completely accurate I might add). Even if you did want to buy a space shuttle to use in a film, you'd probably have to destroy the thing just to make it useable for shooting: running power and HVAC, tearing out walls, etc)
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
This thing really needs to be sitting in the middle of a Las Vegas casino. They could line it with slot machines and run high-stakes card games in the cargo bay.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
The vehicle designators reveal the original plans for the orbiters and test articles. They are:
MPTA-098 non-flight worthy mockup Pathfinder (Its current appearance is largely decoration added after the fact)
STA-099 became OV-099 Challenger
OV-101 Enterprise (The first of the orbital vehicle series. Originally intended to undergo the conversion STA-099 went through)
OV-102 Columbia
OV-103 Discovery
OV-104 Atlantis
OV-105 Endeavour
It was determined that it would be cheaper to make Challenger out of STA-099 rather than perform the necessary upgrades to bring Enterprise up to space flight worthiness. Only cost concerns prevented it from becoming an operational shuttle.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.