From the Moon to the museum

Kenneth Chang

NASA's space shuttles, which have been carrying astronauts aloft for 30 years, were assigned to their final destinations on April 12: one will head to the nation's capital, another to Los Angeles, and the third from its current home at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the centre's visitor complex next door.

In a ceremony commemorating the shuttle programme, Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) administrator, made the long-awaited announcement of where the soon-to-be museum pieces would end up.

The Discovery, which completed its final flight last month, is headed to the Smithsonian, for display at the spacious Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport. The Endeavour, currently on the launching pad for its final space trip, will go to the California Science Center. The Atlantis, scheduled for its last mission in June, will go to the Kennedy visitor complex.

The audience at the Kennedy ceremony erupted into cheering and whooping as General Bolden announced the Atlantis's destination. “I guess I got something right today,” the general said with a laugh.

Those who were unsuccessful

Conspicuous among the unsuccessful hopefuls were the Museum of Flight in Seattle, which had already begun construction of a wing that it hoped would house an orbiter; the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Ohio; and NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas, the site of mission control for the 135 shuttle missions.

The disappointment in Houston was pronounced. Representative Pete Olson, a Republican whose district includes the space centre, said in a statement, “This oversight smacks of a political gesture in an agency that has always served above politics.”

With the Discovery headed to the Smithsonian, the museum will no longer have need for the Enterprise, the shuttle that has been on display there since 2003. The Enterprise, which was used for early glide tests but was never sent into orbit, will now go the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in Manhattan.

Twenty-one institutions across the country had put in bids for one of the orbiters, and in recent weeks, General Bolden was inundated with letters and phone calls from members of Congress and others advocating various sites.

“There were many, many worthy institutions that requested an orbiter, and only four to go around,” General Bolden said.

NASA also announced on April 12 that hundreds of other pieces of hardware from the shuttle programme would be heading to various museums. The Seattle museum, for example, will not receive a flown orbiter, but it will get a full-size mock-up that is now at the Johnson Space Center and is used for astronaut training.

NASA had been expected to make its museum choices last year, but that was when the final shuttle flight had been scheduled for last September. As the schedule for the final missions was stretched out, so were the preparations for the shuttles' post-flying careers.

Historic moments

Finally, General Bolden chose April 12 for the announcement to coincide with the anniversaries of two historic moments in space flight: the 50th anniversary of the flight of Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut who was the first human in space, and the 30th anniversary of the first launching of a space shuttle, the Columbia, in 1981.

Two shuttles — and the astronauts aboard — were lost in the last 30 years. The Challenger disintegrated upon liftoff in January 1986 because of a leaky booster rocket, and 17 years later, the Columbia broke up as it returned to Earth because of wing damage caused by falling insulating foam during liftoff.

In the aftermath of the Columbia, President George W. Bush decided to resume flying the three remaining shuttles — the Discovery, the Atlantis and the Endeavour, which had been built as a replacement for the Challenger — but then to retire them as soon as construction of the International Space Station was complete.

NASA inquired a few years ago whether any museums or other institutions had an interest in acquiring a shuttle. Potential bidders were told that educational programmes would have to accompany the exhibits, and that the shuttles would have to reside in an indoor, climate-controlled environment.

The winning institutions will now have to negotiate with NASA over the cost, estimated at $28.8 million apiece, of preparing the shuttles for display and moving them to their destinations. But not all of them will have to find that much money: Congress exempted the Smithsonian, and the transportation costs for the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex — instead of travelling piggyback on an aircraft, the Atlantis is to be towed just a short way down the road — will be significantly lower.

Some of the orbiters may go on a farewell tour. NASA is looking into “possibly taking them on a tour around various locations throughout the country while they're en route to their final destinations,” said Michael Curie, a spokesman for the space agency.

NASA expects to deliver the shuttles next year.— © New York Times News Service