Coming to a city near you: A space shuttle?

Curious about which four museums will eventually house the four remaining/unclaimed space shuttles?

Check it out live:

http://nycaviation.com/2011/04/live-video-nasa-announces-space-shuttle-destinations/

I'm hoping the Planetarium in Chicago is picked. That's one of those under-the-radar tourist destinations in the Windy City, especially for us space nerds.

 

Discovery is going to DC - NY is getting DC's Enterprise. Figure Texas will get one. And probably Florida.

Would have thought they would have spread them out and given one to the West Coast - LA or Seattle and one to the Midwest Ohio or Chicago.

 

Well ... we'll have to enjoy the Planetarium without a shuttle.

The winners are:

Kennedy Space Center: Atlantis
The California Science Center (Los Angeles): Endeavour
Smithsonian: Discovery (previously announced)
Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum: Enterprise (the prototype for the shuttles)

NASA administrator Charles Bolden says the other 20 or so applicants will get a few spare parts ... thanks for playing!

 

And its the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight (in case you couldn't figure out the Google thing). I'm reading a really good book about the political history of the Space Race. Even though the USSR was first with Sputnik and Gagarin - they knew their space program would be overtaken by the US - but they were desperate for the PR and threw up anything they could to be "first" whether it resulted in any lasting advance in space research or not.

 

New York gets the one that's never actually been in space. Will still be cool, as is all of the Intrepid.

 

How in the world does Houston not get one of these? It's been Mission Control for the entire time the shuttle program was alive. It's Space City, for Pete's sake.

 

They tried to send Columbia there, but FedEx really fucked that one up.
Too soon?

 

If the government wanted to get serious about getting out of debt, they'd hold a big garage sale and sell the shuttles as part of that.

Or maybe keep them in service and give rides to billionaires.

 

Well, W is no longer in the White House.

 

Ironically, the early successes of the Soviet space program were mainly due to the inefficiency of their nuclear weapons program.

When the Soviets were designing their first generation of ballistic missiles, their atomic weapons were much larger and heavier than comparable weapons for the Americans. Thus, to launch them for intercontinental distances, the boosters had to be designed much larger in the first place with a much higher lifting capacity.

So when the boosters became operational, they had much greater weight capacity in the first place and needed little modification or adaptation when they wanted to launch satellites or manned spacecraft. The U.S. caught up and surpassed the Soviets during the Gemini program when launch vehicle capacity was pretty much equalized and then took the lead for good with Apollo.

 

I was thinking about writing something like that but I didn't have the guts. Especially when I heard the runners up, like Houston, will get spare parts. (and broken hearts).