Desert Falcon's Archives
What will NASA do with the Retired Space Shuttles
Discovery, the oldest of NASA's shuttles, has already been promised to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., leaving Atlantis and Endeavour available for other institutions. Discovery will replace the test shuttle Enterprise, which has been on exhibit in the Smithsonian's Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center, in Chantilly, Va., since 2003. So Enterprise, which was built between 1974 and 1976 and was used for NASA's Approach and Landing Test program, will also be looking for a new home.
Some of the institutions trying to snag one of the other retired orbiters include: the Johnson Space Center in Houston; the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio; the Museum of Flight in Seattle; and the Intrepid Air & Space Museum in New York City.
"The rivalry may be unprecedented in space artifact history. In the past, the Smithsonian took ownership of all spacecraft and then loaned them to other institutions," explained Robert Pearlman, editor of collectSPACE.com, an online publication and community for space history and artifact enthusiasts, and a SPACE.com contributor.
"With the two shuttles (and perhaps even with the unflown prototype Enterprise), NASA will decide who gets a shuttle... for keeps. Add to that the limited availability as compared to Apollo for example, when there were many more capsules to go around, and you have the makings of a space race among museums where the prize is no less than the world's first and most famous reusable space plane," he added.
READ MORE: Space.com
