It's official: Dayton won't get space shuttle

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Space Shuttle Atlantis takes flight on its STS-27 mission on December 2, 1988. Atlantis will make one more flight this year before its retirement.

By Jack Torry and John Nolan
Staff Writers Updated 4:40 PM Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The space shuttle will not be coming to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. announced at 1:35 p.m. that NASA will donate the four retired shuttles to sites other than the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.

Bolden, a former shuttle pilot and commander, said the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will receive the orbiter Atlantis; the California Science Center in Los Angeles will receive the orbiter Endeavor; the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. will receive the orbiter Discovery; and the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City will get the Enterprise, which was used for testing and never flew in space.

Bolden made the announcement outside the Kennedy Space Center hangar where the Atlantis is being prepared for its last space flight. As the people there applauded his decision to keep Atlantis at Kennedy, he thanked them said “it’s been a rough day” and appeared overcome with emotion as his voice cracked and tears welled in his eyes.

U.S. Reps. Mike Turner, R-Centerville and Steve Austria, R-Beavercreek, called the decision a slap in the face.

“New York and L.A. don’t make a lot of sense. They didn’t make contributions to the program,” Turner said, referring to the shuttle program. “No one in the Midwest is going to have a shuttle.

“We’ll never be New York, we’ll never be Los Angeles. But we’ll always be home to the Wright Brothers, to all things aerospace,” Turner said.

Austria called the decision “a disservice to the Midwest and the Air Force,” but added “we will respect the decision and move on.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, called for a federal investigation by the General Accountability Office on the site selection process.

“NASA ignored the intent of Congress and the interests of taxpayers. NASA was directed to consider regional diversity when determining shuttle locations,” Brown said. “Unfortunately, it looks like regional diversity amounts to which coast you are on, or which exit you use on I-95. Even more insulting to taxpayers is that having paid to build the shuttles, they will now be charged to see them at some sites.”

Austria said the Air Force museum came in fifth among the 21 sites vying for the orbiters. All of the shuttles were awarded to sites on the nation’s coasts in part to attract international travelers, Austria said.

Although the Air Force museum did not get a shuttle, it will get a shuttle’s main engine and a crew compartment simulator, said museum director Jack Hudson. Other sites will receive shuttle equipment and artifacts as well, Bolden said.

“We respect the decision and wish the winners the best,” Hudson said.

Other prominent institutions competing for the orbiters included Space Center Houston, the visitor center of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, longtime home of the space program’s Mission Control and home of the astronaut training programs; Seattle’s Museum of Flight; Chicago’s Adler Planetarium and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum already displays Enterprise in a northern Virginia facility. Months ago, NASA promised a flown orbiter to the Smithsonian, which would then reassign Enterprise for a new home.

Bolden’s announcement was broadcast live via a NASA television feed. The Air Force museum invited 1,500 members of the public, along with members of Congress and local officials, to view Bolden’s announcement live at the museum on NASA TV.

NASA told the shuttle-pursuing institutions months ago that it would cost each site $28.8 million for display preparation tasks ($20.8 million) and transport of the orbiter ($8 million), in order to defray costs to American taxpayers.

NASA itself is bearing millions of dollars in costs to remove fuel and any other toxic materials from the orbiters, to make them safe for public display.

According to NASA, the preparation and transport costs to the shuttle-receiving institutions include production and installation of shuttle engine mockups, since NASA plans to keep the original engines; work on crew and payload compartments, and flying the orbiters to their new homes aboard the modified Boeing 747 planes that transport them.

Two shuttle flights remain, of the Endeavour and Atlantis, before the shuttle program officially ends this summer. Discovery made its last flight in March of this year. NASA is now cleaning up Discovery for its eventual display. The space agency has said it doesn’t expect to be ready to transfer the orbiters to their new homes until 2012.

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