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Shuttle decision to be aired in Dayton

Announcement to come during museum seminar at Wright-Patterson AFB.

FROM LEFT: Jack Hudson, director of the National Museum of the United States Air Force; Dik Daso, curator of modern military aircraft at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum; and Tom Crouch, a Dayton native and senior curator in the aeronautics division of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum gather during the opening reception for the Mutual Concerns of Air and Space Museums Conference on Sunday. Staff photo by Lisa Powell

Lisa Powell FROM LEFT: Jack Hudson, director of the National Museum of the United States Air Force; Dik Daso, curator of modern military aircraft at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum; and Tom Crouch, a Dayton native and senior curator in the aeronautics division of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum gather during the opening reception for the Mutual Concerns of Air and Space Museums Conference on Sunday. Staff photo by Lisa Powell

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By Marc Katz, Staff Writer Updated 1:10 AM Monday, April 11, 2011

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE — On Tuesday, all interested parties in contention for one of three retiring space shuttles to be distributed by NASA will be gathered at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden is expected to reveal which museums will receive one of three retired shuttles at 1 p.m. Tuesday.

The gathering is part of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Mutual Concerns of Air and Space Museums Seminar, which began Sunday evening and continues through Friday. The gathering of the group in Dayton is coincidental to the announcement, Jean DeStefano, manager of lectures and seminars at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, said last month. More than 100 museums are represented at the seminar.

Tuesday is the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch and the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force and 20 other facilities are competing to receive one of the retiring shuttles. The shuttles that will be made available are Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis as well as Enterprise, a prototype which was flown as a glider in atmospheric tests but never in space. Enterprise currently is housed at the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian likely will get a space-flown shuttle, probably the Discovery, which would free up Enterprise for another facility.

The applicants most frequently mentioned as the most likely candidates for Endeavour, Atlantis and Enterprise are: the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in Manhattan, the Museum of Flight in Seattle and the Air Force museum at Wright-Patterson.

The public is welcome to Tuesday’s announcement, but only 1,500 seats will be available with about 180 of them already will be taken by seminar participants.

This is the 24th seminar run by the Smithsonian and first in Dayton.

While acquiring one of the shuttles is not on the seminar agenda — and was not mentioned in any welcoming remarks Sunday — it was difficult not to broach the subject.

“We get the pick of the litter if it’s (aircraft) Air Force,” said retired Maj. Gen. Charles Metcalf, who ran the Air Force museum from 1996-2010. “This (the shuttle) is different because it’s NASA property.

“The fact is, we are constantly adding displays.”

Retired Lt. Gen. Jack Hudson, who runs the museum now said, “Certainly, if we get one (a shuttle), it will draw more people, but probably every month we have something new at the museum.

“We already have planes such as the XB70, which is one-of-a-kind, and the planes of four presidents — Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy.”

As host of the seminar, the Dayton region is able to offer a unique look at flight for participants. Sunday’s opening welcome was given by Amanda Wright-Lane, great-grandniece of Wilbur and Orville Wright, who invented the airplane in their bicycle shop, just a few blocks northwest of the Marriott, where the initial session was.

Wright-Lane told the crowd even though she did not know her uncles (Wilbur died in 1912 and Orville in 1948, five years before Amanda was born) and did not fly herself (nor is the family afforded free air fare on commercial flights), she has become a historian of her two famous uncles.

“They thought of their invention as an investment in peace,” said Wright-Lane, who lives in Cincinnati. “When the planes were used in World War I, they thought if people saw what war was like, it would come to an end. They thought the airplane would make war so undesirable, no one would start one.”

“It is my honor to welcome you to Dayton,” Wright-Lane said. She’d love to repeat that line for a shuttle.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2157 or mkatz@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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