INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Should the city of Houston, which proudly bills itself as "Space City," have a prized Space Shuttle orbiter on public display?More than a
decade ago, arguably, the answer was yes
After all, the Space Shuttle program was managed from Johnson Space Center, in southeastern Houston
All the astronauts who flew on the shuttle trained there
And the vehicle was operated out of Mission Control at the Houston-based facility.But when the final decisions were being made to distribute
the shuttles 15 years ago, the Houston community dragged its feet on putting together a competitive proposal
There were also questions about the ability of Space Center Houston to raise funding to house the shuttle within a new display area, which
magnified concerns that the historical vehicle, like a Saturn V rocket before it, would be left outside in the region's humid environment
Finally, other cities offered better proposals for displaying the shuttles to the public.In the end, the four shuttles were sent to museums
in Washington, DC, New York, Florida, and California.And that was all more or less settled until last week when the two US senators from
Texas, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, filed the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act" to move Space Shuttle Discovery from its current location the
Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Houston.The space collectibles news site, CollectSpace, has a good overview of why this move is stupidly
Essentially, it would easily cost $1 billion to get one of the two shuttle aircraft carriers back into service and move Discovery, it is
unclear where the shuttle could survive such a journey in its current state, and the Smithsonian is the nation's premier museum
There's a reason that Discovery, the most historical of the three remaining shuttles that have gone to space, was placed there.After the
senators announced their bill, the collective response from the space community was initially shock
This was soon followed by: why? And so I've spoken with several people on background, both from the political and space spheres, to get a
sense of what is really happening here
The short answer is that it is all political, and the timing is due to the reelection campaign for Cornyn, who faces a stiff runoff against
