NASA Announces Final Homes for Space Shuttles

[Sabre86]

Houston Chronicle:

HOUSTON — Texas leaders accused NASA on Tuesday of allowing politics to dictate which sites across the country received retiring space shuttles, and some clamored for a congressional investigation into how decision-makers could have passed over Houston's Johnson Space Center and its "Mission Control."

Twenty-one locations nationally had been in the running. The final decision: Atlantis will stay in Cape Canaveral, Fla., at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex; Endeavour is headed to the California Science Center, near the plant where the shuttle was built; Discovery's new home will be the Smithsonian Institution's branch in northern Virginia; and New York City's Intrepid Museum will get the prototype Enterprise, currently housed in the Smithsonian.

And Houston?

It will have to settle for such shuttle artifacts as seats for the flight deck pilot and commander.

"It's really just a slap in the face," said Ed Emmett, chief executive of Harris County, which includes Houston.

Shuttles launch from Cape Canaveral but then oversight from Earth shifts to the Johnson Space Center and Mission Control, hence the infamous phrase uttered by Tom Hanks in the movie "Apollo 13," "Houston, we have a problem."

The Space Center Houston is a museum adjacent to Johnson Space Center that attracts 750,000 visitors a year. It hosted a viewing party Tuesday, streaming the broadcast of NASA's choices throughout the facility.

"We were a bit crestfallen," said Space Center spokesman Jack Moore. He added, however, "so we won't have the machine here, but we still have the people."

Shuttle astronauts all trained in Houston and perhaps 25 to 35 still live here, said Bob Mitchell, president of Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, which helped lead the city's bid to secure a retiring shuttle.

"It doesn't make sense at all," he said.

Mitchell said President Obama's re-election bid factored into NASA's choosing locations in Florida and California. Houston Mayor Annise Parker struck a similar tone, saying the decision was largely expected since the White House hinted "Houston would not be a winner in this political competition."

"There was no other city with our history of human space flight or more deserving of a retiring orbiter," Parker said in a statement.

Mitchell said he would like a congressional investigation into NASA's decision-making — and expects Texas congressional leaders to call for one.

In a statement, Republican Sen. John Cornyn said, "it is clear political favors trumped common sense and fairness." Added Republican U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, "with this White House I always expect the worst and am rarely disappointed."

[AceRimmer]

Houston got screwed. NYC got the big present with the Enterprise.

 

Nah, nothing to do with politics...