Author Topic: Move Space Shuttle Discovery to Texas (Read 5121 times)

Blackstar · « **on:** 05/01/2025 12:59 am »

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-041025a-space-shuttle-discovery-move-smithsonian-houston-legislation.html

Texas senators: Move space shuttle from Smithsonian to Houston
April 10, 2025

"NASA's retired space shuttle Discovery may be removed from the Smithsonian and put on display in Houston, if two lawmakers from Texas get their way.

U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Thursday (April 10) introduced the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act," which directs NASA to take Discovery from the national collection and its Virginia home of the past 13 years and deliver it to official visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"It is past time that the Space Center Houston museum houses a space shuttle, given the unique relationship between the entire program and its support staff in Houston," said Cruz, who chairs the Senate committee that has oversight of NASA. "Bringing the Discovery to its final home will offer hundreds of thousands of visitors each year the opportunity to engage with a living piece of NASA's history and understand why Houston is known worldwide as 'Space City.'"

AmigaClone · « **Reply #1 on:** 05/01/2025 01:29 am »

That is 14+ years to late in my opinion.

I would instead propose a display that would replicate the one at Kennedy Space Center with two differences: Instead of the Space Shuttle Atlantis with a Hubble mockup, have a mockup of Space Shuttle Columbia as flown on STS-107 to include a mockup of the Research Double module.

StraumliBlight · « **Reply #2 on:** 05/01/2025 08:56 am »

Eric Berger had some thoughts

Quote

Here's what we know about the legislation, which is, in DC parlance, a "messaging bill." Cornyn is behind this, and Cruz simply agreed to go along. The goal in Cornyn's campaign is to use the bill as a way to show Texans that he is fighting for them in Washington, DC, against the evils there. Presumably, he will blame the Obama administration, even though it is quite clear in hindsight that there were no political machinations behind the decision to not award a space shuttle to Houston.

Space Center Houston, which would be responsible for hosting the shuttle, was not even told about the legislation before it was filed. NASA, too, is not a willing party. The space agency does not want to have to find retirees who worked on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft decades ago to work to try to refurbish one of them. The most flight-ready aircraft of the two had its orbiter attachments removed, needs new engines, and would have to be recertified to return to flight. "We don't want any part of this," one NASA official told Ars.

It seems unlikely that this is a punitive bill toward the Smithsonian. It just happens that, according to Cornyn's office, Discovery is the only shuttle still "owned" by the federal government and therefore eligible to be transported.

The bottom line is that two Texas senators want taxpayers to spend at least $1 billion to remove the most historic Space Shuttle from the most historic spaceflight museum in the world, possibly break it in an across-the-country move, and then put it in a nondescript warehouse in Houston. I am a huge space buff who lives just a few minutes away from Space Center Houston. Even I can recognize this for the colossally stupid idea that it is.

laszlo · « **Reply #3 on:** 05/01/2025 03:48 pm »

Cruz is channeling David Cameron with this idiotic idea.

catdlr · « **Reply #4 on:** 05/01/2025 07:33 pm »

Quote from: laszlo on 05/01/2025 03:48 pm

Cruz is channeling David Cameron with this idiotic idea.

Houston would benefit from creating a museum for the ISS by integrating the underwater training version of the ISS and all the training module versions into a single building, allowing visitors to explore and appreciate its size. Houston has been managing its operations for over 25 years. Plans for that could begin now and be ready when the ISS is decommissioned; those parts can then be moved over.

laszlo · « **Reply #5 on:** 05/02/2025 08:00 pm »

Quote from: catdlr on 05/01/2025 07:33 pm

Houston would benefit from creating a museum for the ISS by integrating the underwater training version of the ISS and all the training module versions into a single building, allowing visitors to explore and appreciate its size. Houston has been managing its operations for over 25 years. Plans for that could begin now and be ready when the ISS is decommissioned; those parts can then be moved over.

Leave it in the pool and rent wet spacesuits to the visitors so they can experience it floating upside down like an astro- cosmo- naut.

sdsds · « **Reply #6 on:** 06/30/2025 12:54 am »

Discovery is not mentioned in the Senate version of the bill. Instead the wording in the bill could be met by placing the Orion from Artemis II on display in Houston.

Blackstar · « **Reply #7 on:** 07/01/2025 07:58 pm »

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-063025a-big-beautiful-bill-space-shuttle-discovery-move-houston.html

catdlr · « **Reply #8 on:** 07/01/2025 08:06 pm »

Just my 2 cents. If Discovery had gone to another location, the Canton, Ohio, USAF museum would have been a better choice, as this ship was initially intended for their dedicated payloads launch out of VAFB.

sdsds · « **Reply #9 on:** 07/02/2025 03:47 am »

Dear Representative <fill in the blank>,

I'm writing to make sure you're aware of some extraordinarily wasteful spending in the Senate version of the OBBBA. Referring to the text provided at https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/the_one_big_beautiful_bill_act.pdf on page 163 beginning on line 7 with the text, "‘‘(F) $85,000,000 shall be obligated to carry out subsection (b), of which not less than $5,000,000 shall be obligated for the transportation of the space vehicle described in that subsection...." The project described there is essentially the same as the bill Senators Cornyn and Cruz introduced as the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act," It is a complete waste of taxpayer dollars to relocate the Discovery orbiter from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum to a facility in Texas which has not yet been built.

Please take a moment to look at that legislation and see it for what it is, and then please introduce an amendment to the OBBBA that would strike that language from the Bill.

Thank you for your attention to this matter in this quite busy time! Best regards, <insert your name here>

edkyle99 · « **Reply #10 on:** 07/04/2025 10:28 pm »

Grave robbers.

- Ed Kyle

SpaceLizard · « **Reply #11 on:** 07/04/2025 10:40 pm »

"It belongs in a museum!"

Joris · « **Reply #12 on:** 07/04/2025 10:57 pm »

They can take away one of the three flown capsules in Houston and put them in another (non-Texan) museum, to fullfill the requirements of this bill. Which would be the most poetic, and arguably by far the cheapest thing to do, as the capsules are small enough to be moved risk-free, unlike a shuttle.

If they do try to move Discovery, we can hope that the money is spend on making a new carrier plane to be finished right when the money runs out, leaving the Discovery where it is and should be. Moving it over roads will probably have the money run out when the Discovery is somewhere in the middle of nowhere stuck on some windy road in the Appalachians.

Lee Jay · « **Reply #13 on:** 07/04/2025 11:39 pm »

To accomplish this utterly idiotic task, I think you'd have to move it over land to the vicinity of Alexandria and then take it by barge to Houston. Reconstituting an SCA is probably harder than that.

catdlr · « **Reply #14 on:** 07/05/2025 12:05 am »

Quote from: Lee Jay on 07/04/2025 11:39 pm

To accomplish this utterly idiotic task, I think you'd have to move it over land to the vicinity of Alexandria and then take it by barge to Houston. Reconstituting an SCA is probably harder than that.

Unlike the Kennedy Space Center and the California Science Center, which allocate substantial funds to ship and establish permanent facilities for their vehicles, making relocation difficult, the Smithsonian opted for a more economical approach by simply parking the vehicle as a static display, thus making it easier to relocate. Houston should inquire with Los Angeles about the considerable effort and expenditure required to construct a suitable and permanent building for this historic vehicle. Unfortunately, it appears to be temporarily housed in a building in Houston, which will probably be all they can afford, as the $85 million is just enough to move it into a tent until sufficient funding is available, or someone with deep pockets steps up.

catdlr · « **Reply #15 on:** 07/05/2025 09:58 am »

Since we are on the topic of moving Discovery to Houston, here are two proposed alternative means to transport the shuttle back in the day.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=58473.msg2601869#msg2601869

Apollo22 · « **Reply #16 on:** 07/05/2025 10:38 am »

This is such a petty, pathetic idea. I personally won't discuss it further because only rude words would come out of my keyboard.
What is really sickening is that the OBBB bill funds that, and slash NASA science. Hardly surprising, unfortunately...

collectSPACE · « **Reply #17 on:** 07/05/2025 08:13 pm »

Quote from: catdlr on 07/05/2025 12:05 am

...the Smithsonian opted for a more economical approach by simply parking the vehicle as a static display

Economics played a part, sure, but that is not why Discovery is displayed the way it is. Unlike other museums, the Smithsonian has a dual mission of both public access and conservation. Endeavour and Atlantis were stripped of many of their internal systems to allow for their dynamic displays; Discovery as the "vehicle of record" was kept largely intact (as much as it could be made safe for public display). To this day, it still leaks hydraulic fluid. It is on it wheels so as enable ongoing study of the effects of it aging; research impossible with the other orbiters.

Blackstar · « **Reply #18 on:** 07/07/2025 10:53 pm »

There's a lot more that could be written about how Discovery ended up where it did and the rules that went into that. It would get boring fast. But I'll add that there was a study done about the stresses put on Atlantis to display it the way it is displayed, at an angle, and the study showed that Atlantis will be damaged by that display. The vehicle was not designed to be hung at an angle.

But museums cannot perfectly preserve anything. It's impossible. The best that they can do is to minimize the degradation to artifacts. So they make choices about what is an acceptable level of degradation. And they revisit those decisions from time to time. Maybe Atlantis will be fine sitting like that for 50 years, or maybe 10 years from now they'll do an inspection and discover that it is being damaged too much and requires repairs. That's just part of managing a museum collection.

eric z · « **Reply #19 on:** **Today** at 12:51 am »

Anyone who has walked, or wheel - chaired, around Discovery can't help but feel a sense of awe, and deep respect for the people that built, maintained and flew it. It's BIG! We got something the size of an airliner into orbit, and when it came back
it landed on a runway. Nothing short of miraculous. It should never be taken for granted, though many do.
I strongly urge anyone visiting the D.C. area to get out to see it in person, and all the other wonderful planes and spacecraft there to admire. :)t