Government shutdown could delay shuttle announcement

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By Jack Torry, Washington Bureau Updated 12:46 AM Thursday, April 7, 2011

WASHINGTON – NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden has warned area U.S. lawmakers that a shutdown of the federal government could delay a planned public announcement next week on whether Wright-Patterson Air Force Base will receive one of the retired space shuttles.

Bolden delivered the warning Tuesday in a telephone call with Rep. Steve Austria, R-Beavercreek, who has been lobbying NASA to send one of its three shuttles to the National Museum of the Air Force at Wright-Patterson. NASA is scheduled to make the announcement at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday — the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle flight .

“The announcement of the space shuttles could be delayed if there is a government shutdown,’’ Austria said Wednesday.

A temporary spending measure keeping the federal government open expires at midnight Friday. Unless an agreement can be forged among President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the government will close this weekend.

Although military installations would likely not be affected by a government shutdown, Austria said NASA would probably close until a new spending bill is approved by Congress.

Austria, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said lawmakers are “working late hours’’ and that “Speaker Boehner has had meetings with the president and Harry Reid to avoid a government shutdown.”

Even with a shutdown looming, Ohio lawmakers continued their frenetic lobbying effort to persuade NASA to send one of the shuttles — preferably the Atlantis — to the Dayton region.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said he spoke Tuesday with a senior NASA official about the shuttle. His staff declined to say who the NASA official was.

“The shuttle is so important to Southwest Ohio,” Brown told reporters on a conference call. “We are still very hopeful that Dayton gets this because it has earned it.”