Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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".
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.