Jobs, money at stake in national fight for shuttle

With its twin solid rocket boosters and three main engines churning at seven million pounds of thrust, the Space Shuttle Atlantis thunders skyward from Launch Pad 39A. Liftoff of Mission STS-45 occurred at 8:13:40 a.m. EST, March 24, 1992. On board for the 46th Shuttle flight are a crew of seven and the Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science-1 (ATLAS-1). The launch is the second in 1992 for the Shuttle program and Atlantis' 11th flight.

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By Tom Beyerlein , Staff Writer Updated 12:31 PM Sunday, April 3, 2011

For the first time in the history of the U.S. space program, NASA is offering its manned spacecraft to organizations other than the Smithsonian Institution, and Dayton is in the running to get one of them.

On April 12 — the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch — NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden is to reveal whether the National Museum of the Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base will receive one of three retired shuttles. The museum and 20 other facilities are competing for the orbiters, which are expected to be world-class tourist attractions. The shuttles will be delivered between Sept. 30 and May 31, 2012.

“It (the announcement) will be a very big deal, indeed,” said Tom Crouch, senior curator for aeronautics at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. “This is the first time spacecraft that actually carried humans have been outside our collection or NASA’s.” Some of those craft are on loan to other museums in the U.S. and abroad.

The competition among museums for such important artifacts is highly unusual, said Robert Pearlman, editor and founder of collectspace.com, an online journal for aerospace historians. “This whole process is unprecedented in national museum history, if not world museum history,” he said.

The stakes are high, said Tony Sculimbrene, executive director of the Dayton-based National Aviation Heritage Alliance.

He said if the Air Force museum, already Ohio’s biggest free tourist attraction, were to double its annual attendance of 1.3 million, it would bring 650-700 jobs and $40 million annually in additional economic activity to the region’s hotels, shops and restaurants.

“Places that understand tourism are places that want one of these shuttles,” Sculimbrene said. “It’s an international icon. It would be a huge boost to the Air Force museum and a huge boost to the region as a whole.”

NASA is making available three shuttles — Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis — plus the prototype Enterprise, which was flown as a glider in atmospheric tests but never in space. The Smithsonian, which now houses the Enterprise, is considered likely to get a space-flown shuttle, probably the Discovery. The Enterprise would then go to another museum.

Each successful applicant must pay NASA  $28.8 million to make the shuttle ready for display and to transport it to its destination. President Barack Obama has placed $14 million in his budget proposal for the Air Force museum to acquire a shuttle, but that’s subject to congressional approval.

“The community is confident that the money will be there if necessary to secure a shuttle,” said Michael Gessel, vice president of federal programs for the Dayton Development Coalition, which has been working on the shuttle campaign. “We will not let this opportunity go for lack of money.”

It’s difficult to handicap Dayton’s odds of getting a shuttle, observers say, because it’s uncertain what criteria Bolden is using in making his decisions.

“This has largely been covered like a horse race, where there’s a frontrunner and a lagger,” Gessel said. “It’s more like a sealed-bid auction. We don’t know the criteria. That’s what makes it so difficult to predict which museums may get them and which may not. What we’re left with in judging (applicants’) proposals is the decibel volume of their screams.”

While Bolden’s criteria are unknown, Gessel said “common-sense criteria” would include whether a contender already has good attendance, an outstanding space collection, a professional curatorial staff and a quality educational program. The applicants often mentioned as the most likely candidates for Endeavour, Atlantis and Enterprise are:

• The Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. “One of them, let’s face it, has to go to the Cape,” Crouch said. “The Cape is where every space shuttle started its journey.”

• The Johnson Space Center in Houston, home of NASA’s Mission Control. Some say Houston could be at a disadvantage because Bolden may not want to turn over two shuttles to NASA facilities.

• The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in Manhattan. New York City has waged an aggressive campaign for a shuttle, even though it has little to do with the program’s history.

•The Museum of Flight in Seattle, which has already begun constructing an addition for a shuttle without knowing if it will receive one.

• The Air Force museum at Wright-Patterson. Obama put the $14 million in his budget to help pay to locate a shuttle here in recognition of the Air Force’s role in pioneering the technologies that made the shuttle possible. The museum has asked for the Atlantis, which was involved in more military missions than any other shuttle.

“Dayton is among the favorites, high up on the very short list,” Pearlman said.

NASA has refused to release a list of the 21 applicants, and Pearlman said only about half of them have publicly expressed their desire for a shuttle.

While some applicants have conducted high-profile public campaigns complete with billboards, rallies, letter-writing and petition drives, Dayton area officials have mostly worked behind the scenes. “The focus has been on making sure we have the political support and a solid business plan for a space shuttle,” said Timothy R. Gaffney, a board member of the alliance and former military affairs and aviation reporter for the Dayton Daily News.

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