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Senator irked that N.Y. to build museum for shuttle

Brown protests what he calls ‘bait-and-switch’ in letter to NASA.

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By Jessica Wehrman , Washington Bureau 10:44 PM Thursday, September 29, 2011

WASHINGTON — Sen. Sherrod Brown is irritated about a report that New York, which received the decommissioned Enterprise space shuttle under the premise that it would house it in the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, now plans to build a separate museum for the Enterprise.

In a story in the New York Times Thursday, museum officials said they plan to use a site now occupied by a bagel shop, a car wash, storage warehouses and a strip club for a new space-themed museum. The museum does not yet own the property.

Dayton had sought to house one of the retired air shuttles at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, but was not selected by NASA. Instead, the three available shuttles went to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the California Science Center in Los Angeles and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. The Enterprise, currently at the Smithsonian, will go to New York.

Brown, D-Ohio, plans to write a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden protesting what he calls a “bait-and-switch.”

“If the Intrepid Museum’s plan was to build a new facility in an area of New York that it does not currently have permission to build on, that should have been made clear to NASA from the start,” Brown said. “This report makes evident that New York City was, and still is, woefully unprepared to house the Enterprise Shuttle.”

Brown said the story “raises further questions about the thoroughness of NASA’s selection process” and said “I believe NASA should revisit its decision to send the Enterprise to New York.”

NASA Spokesman Michael Curie made clear that’s not likely to happen.

“At this time NASA does not foresee any issues that would prevent transferring the Enterprise to Intrepid as scheduled in 2012,” he said.

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