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Lawmakers Want a Space Shuttle In New York City
Hugh Pickens writes "Bloomberg reports that New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and a bipartisan delegation of 17 US representatives from New York and New Jersey have sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden calling for the agency to place a shuttle aboard the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City. A former aircraft carrier, Intrepid served as one of NASA's recovery vehicles for early space flights. Intrepid officials have gathered almost 57,000 signatures on a petition to bring an orbiter to New York, and NASA is weighing 21 bids from visitors' centers, science museums and educational institutions eager to host one of the three aging space shuttles that will be retired this year. 'These are going to be like the Mona Lisa,' says space historian John Logsdon, referring to Leonardo da Vinci's iconic 1506 portrait of a woman in Florence that remains on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. 'The primary criteria for the shuttles' location will be the stability of the site and whether the chosen institutions can exhibit them for the next 500 years.'"
Sure, why the hell not? There are plenty of Intrepid Space cadets in NYC.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
These are going to be like the Mona Lisa,' says space historian John Logsdon, referring to Leonardo da Vinci's iconic 1506 portrait of a woman in Florence that remains on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris
I'm glad he specified that. I wasn't sure what he was talking about with just a simple "Mona Lisa".
Several cities and domestic air museums have already made their bids, etc. more than a year ago. From Disney to Evergreen, everyone wanted either an airframe or an engine. Evergreen had billboards up for more than a year that have been taken down long since.
No one was interested when they saw the cost to transport, sanitize and decommission just one shuttle.
So what's happening now? Lawmakers= lobbiests for the NYC tourism board begging with the expectation the tax payers will foot the bill? A shuttle wouldn't last one year exposed to the elements on the deck of the Intrepid Sea. Might as well put them on Antiques Roadshow.
If anyone can afford it these days, it will be either Dubai or Shanghai.
'These are going to be like the Mona Lisa,' says space historian John Logsdon
Not really. Despite how much we like to think that we've advanced since 1969, we really haven't. I think the shuttle will be remembered like the Pentium 4, interesting, useful, but a technological dead end. Perhaps things would be different if America actually had a vision of space, but since the cold war ended we've had the worst of all worlds. Lack of willingness for the government to fund public spaceflights and lack of government cooperation for private spaceflight. Apollo will be remembered like the Mona Lisa, it was a large achievement in spaceflight. The shuttle? Unless something -major- comes out of the development of it, I think we will remember it more for Challenger and Columbia than anything else.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I really cannot think of why New York deserves one, the city made little to no real contribution to the Shuttle program. They are simply leveraging politics to get another tourist draw for nothing. That's not a good enough reason.
Instead of making one of the retiring orbiters a political kewpie doll, they should instead go to the following cities:
1) Kennedy Space Center.
It's where the launches and a large number of landings occurred, and that puts the spacecraft into context -- especially because there's a restored Saturn V hanging in the Apollo Center, the VAB and the launch pads are there, and a visitor will be able to see the launch site...not to mention ongoing space activities, whatever they are.
2) Houston
For many of the same reasons as KSC, Houston deserves an orbiter because it was the site of the bulk of training facilities, because it is the ongoing center for American manned space operations and because it too has a restored Saturn V to complement the orbiter.
3) The Smithsonian Air & Space Museum
This is the final resting place for most all of America's flighted space hardware, and an orbiter simply must join Apollo 11's capsule, the Mercury capsules, along with the other important space and aerospace artifacts. Yes, the Smithsonian currently has a flight-test body, but it could give that up in exchange for an orbiter.
Which in turn leads me to say that the Enterprise could go to New York, although I would prefer to see it go to the west coast to a museum there so that Shuttle hardware is located across the geography of the country.
I agree that New York is a piss-poor choice: as I've posted elsewhere, the Intrepid is a lousy place to preserve historically-significant machinery. Outdoors in the salt air? No.
No argument about the Smithsonian either: it's *the* federal museum.
But I'm not sure about KSC and Space Center Houston. They've got a lot of great stuff, but I consider their mission to be primarily the business of spaceflight, with tourism and museum projects second. Also, I'd like to see key space artifacts spread around the country, both so they can inspire a wider range of people, and so that a really nasty hurricane can't wipe out *all* of our space artifacts in one go.
Me, I'm voting for the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, which does a great job of preserving and displaying really big machinery, gets a *ton* of visitors, and could use a centerpiece like this.
That is just a knee-jerk reaction to what happened to the Russian space shuttle. After retirement (after one flight) it was stored in less-than-stable circumstances in Kazakhstan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)#Destruction
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/bbur89.jpg
BTW, the Russian shuttle was largely a copy of the US shuttle, except they added some safety features. When the Russians start making safety improvements to your design, you know you have a problem.
Agreed. The Intrepid is a great museum, and one of my favorite places in the world. But it's very specifically a museum of durable things. Military aircraft and supersonic transports that are designed for all-weather.
The Space Shuttle is the very definition of a Hangar Queen. It takes tens of thousands of man hours of re-fitting for each flight. The tiles are delicate, and it's not really designed to be exposed to the elements long term. It might be able to be, but given it's track record, do we really want to risk it when there are only three remaining in existence?
Yes, they probably *could* get it into the hangar bay of the Intrepid, but given the shuttle's size, they may actually have to dismantle the ship to do so.
The Essex Class carrier has a deck elevator with dimensions of 60 ft x 34 ft. It's maximum load weight was 40,000 Lbs. The shuttle orbiter by comparison is 122.17 ft by 78.06 ft and weighs 151,205 lb.
In other words, the orbiter weighs in (empty) at triple the capacity of the Intrepid's elevators. Even if they didn't use the elevators and used some kind of crane instead, it's still 78.06 ft on it's smaller dimension vs the deck opening's larger dimension which is 60 ft.
They'd have to dismantle either the Intrepid or the orbiter to get it inside. Even if they did, the hangar deck is hardly climate controlled to begin with...
To use the Intrepid site, they'd either have to dismantle part of the ship to get it inside, then extensively retrofit it to provide a climate controlled environment, or they'd have to build a new facility on the Pier along side Intrepid just to house the Shuttle. The Intrepid gets most of it's operating budget from admissions, memberships, and the occasional grant. I don't think it's going to go away tomorrow, but I do get the distinct impression that compared to the Smithsonian, or the Kennedy Space Center (both government funded), it's hanging on my the margins.
The 500 year rule makes sense to me. These are invaluable pieces of human history. The Apollo Command Modules are in the same class. The National Air And Space Museum in D.C. makes sense as a location for one. They already have the Columbia module from Apollo 11, which I assume we would want to maintain to the same standards. However, they also already have the orbiter prototype Enterprise, so it seems to make more sense to spread the three remaining orbiters to allow as many people as possible to have access to them as possible. Perhaps one one at Kennedy Space Center, and one in Houston, and one on the West Coast somewhere?
New York City would allow millions of people to have access. And Intrepid is the premier aerospace site in the city. But it's just not equipped or funded for something like this.
The Aerospace museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base may also be appropriate, but it has a distinct military aerospace bias.
Likewise Vandenberg Air Force Base in California could be a great site, as it was almost a second launch site for the Shuttle. Having an orbiter wind up there permanently could be very apropos. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any museum or public exhibit at Vandenberg, which is a shame. Edwards Air Force Base (Secondary shuttle landing site) and White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico could be appropriate for similar reasons. But again, they're both military bases, and not terribl
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
There is quite strong consensus that it wasn't a copy, but independetly developed counterpart - and given the requirements for comparable missions and technology available at the time, the shape of Shuttle & Buran was pretty much the only sensible one...
Look at typical Airbus & Boeing aircraft. Or some biological examples
One that hath name thou can not otter