The Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum has landed a NASA space shuttle!
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will announce later Tuesday that the prototype Enterprise shuttle has been awarded to the Intrepid, sources said.
The decision follows months of aggressive lobbying from Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.
Bolden, a four-time astronaut and retired Marine major general, will also announce where the retiring Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour shuttles will go on display Tuesday afternoon.
The Enterprise shuttle was a test model that flew, but never orbited space.
The Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum on the Hudson’s Pier 86 was up against tough competition from 20 other cities and institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
But “as the cultural and economic capital of our nation, New York City has the right stuff to best exhibit the shuttle,” Gillibrand said.
(Source: NY Daily News)
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4 Responses
Oh, c’mon! Why couldn’t we get one of the real ones?
Besides, I thought the Enterprise was already in the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
How many of you remember when the Enterprise ‘flew’ around NYC on NASA’s 747? I think it was in the mid 80s.
Ha Ha…New York you only get a prototype. Your not good enough for a real space shuttle.
Actually, it was supposed to serve as a prototype test vehicle, and then be reconstructed for space flight, but the design had changed so much in the interim, that it was not used. A decade later, after the Challenger was lost, there was another proposal to refit it for (low-)orbital flight, but they instead constructed a new vehicle, 105, Endeavor, making use of spare parts. BTW, you could say “never achieved Earth orbit,” but who at the News came up with the brilliant wording, “never orbited space”?!? – It’s kinda hard to go around it, and I don’t know anyone but HaKBH who has – and He’s in it at the same time He’s around it. – and that segues right to Seder leil Pesach: Barukh HaMa-kom B”Hu – and, of course, you all know the Gaon’s gematria on getting YKVK to equal 186, Ma-kom, by squaring each letter, and adding….