WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE — Many in the crowd inside the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force groaned Tuesday after NASA’s top executive announced the museum would not receive a retired space shuttle.

More than 500 people gathered at the Air Force museum early Tuesday afternoon to watch a live broadcast of NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. announcing his decision on which sites would receive the four orbiters. The people were hoping to hear good news. Most left the museum disappointed.

Bolden said the winning sites were the Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Complex in Florida, the California Science Center in Los Angeles; the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.; and the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City.

“It is a tough one for us,” said retired Gen. John “Jack” L. Hudson, director of the Air Force museum. “We respect the decision that Gen. Bolden made.”

The Air Force museum will get space shuttle main engines and the crew compartment trainer, which is a full-scale mock-up of the cockpit, Hudson said.

“I was stunned,” said Tom Boyd of West Carrollton, an Air Force veteran and museum supporter.

Boyd thought one shuttle would be centrally located in Ohio. Having two shuttles within 200 miles of one another in New York City and Washington, D.C. “just doesn’t seem fair,” he said.

Jay DeBord, an aeronautical fan from Beavercreek, thought the museum would at least get Enterprise, which was flown in the atmosphere as a glider but never flown in outer space.

“With all the Air Force missions that they flew, I thought maybe we would get one,” DeBord said. “But it ain’t gonna happen.”

Dayton Mayor Gary Leitzell said getting a retired space shuttle would have been a shot in the arm for our struggling region.

“We just keep going forward,” Leitzell said. “It’s not like we’ve lost anything that we didn’t have in the first place.”

The regional effort to land a shuttle at the museum was a “huge opportunity that didn’t come to fruition,” said Brady Kress, president and chief executive of Dayton History.

The shuttle would have doubled the Air Force museum’s annual attendance to 2.6 million visitors and enlarged the facility to where it wouldn’t be possible to see it one day, Kress said. The resulting economic benefits would have included increased hotel stays, restaurant business and visitors to other area attractions such as Carillon Historical Park.

“It is a disappointment for a large part of the county, too, because we are so central to 61 percent of the population,” Kress said.

Dayton, which competed for a shuttle with 20 other cities, isn’t the only one left smarting by NASA’s decision.

Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, was angry that an orbiter wasn’t awarded to Space Center Houston, the official visitor center of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the long-time home of the space program’s Mission Control.

“There is no reason in the world why a piece of American history should be used as a political toy, and that is what happened today,” Mitchell said. He has called for a congressional investigation of NASA’s selection process.

“(President Obama) cannot get re-elected without Florida, New York and California.” Mitchell said. “He just bought himself votes in those states. That’s all it’s about, buying votes.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2419 or dlarsen@DaytonDailyNews.com.