NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr.’s announcement Tuesday afternoon prompted groans from a crowd of slightly more than 500 invited guests and members of the public at the Air Force museum, which made NASA’s live television feed of Bolden’s presentation available to the audience on large screens.
Bolden, a former shuttle pilot and commander, said the Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Complex in Florida will receive the orbiter Atlantis; the California Science Center in Los Angeles will receive the orbiter Endeavour; the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., will receive the orbiter Discovery; and the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City will get the Enterprise, which was used for testing and never flew in space. U.S. Rep. Steve Austria, R-Beavercreek, whose congressional district includes part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the museum is located, said NASA’s administrator told him that the agency selected the Florida, Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles sites because they provide ready international access to visitors.
The Air Force museum ranked fifth on NASA’s list and met all of NASA’s publicly stated criteria to receive shuttles, but didn’t match up — as far as NASA was concerned — in the category of international access to visitors, Austria said NASA told him.
Members of Ohio’s congressional delegation said NASA’s decision slighted the Midwest and the Air Force, which was an early partner of NASA’s in designing and developing the space shuttle and contributed $8 billion to its development.
“New York and L.A. don’t make a lot of sense. They didn’t make contributions to the program,” U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, said of the shuttle program. “No one in the Midwest is going to have a shuttle.
“We’ll never be New York, we’ll never be Los Angeles. But we’ll always be home to the Wright brothers, to all things aerospace,” Turner said.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, called for an investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, investigative and auditing arm of Congress, of NASA’s site selection process.
NASA said its priorities included locations with the largest populations and total visitations. But it declined to award an orbiter to Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city where Adler Planetarium had requested an orbiter, and Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city that has been home for decades to the space program’s Mission Control and astronaut training missions.
Bob Mitchell, a Houston business community leader who had advocated strongly for allocation of an orbiter to his city, said Congress should investigate NASA’s site selection process.
Olga Dominguez, an assistant NASA administrator for strategic infrastructure, told reporters Tuesday that Bolden followed her office’s recommendations for allocating the orbiters.
“NASA took very seriously its mission to find the best locations for display of these engineering and education marvels. ... We just did not have enough to go around,” Dominguez said. “Reaching the largest population possible has always been part of our criteria.”
She said the chosen sites had connections to the space program.
The Kennedy Space Center launched all of the shuttle missions and was the landing spot for about half of them, she said.
Los Angeles was selected, in part, because southern California is where orbiters were designed and built, Dominguez said. The New York museum is located on the retired aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, which retrieved splashed-down Gemini capsules from the Atlantic Ocean, she noted.
The Smithsonian was selected because it is the curator of national artifacts, Dominguez said.
Of Congress’ calls for investigation of NASA’s site selection process, Dominguez said: “I stand by the process we followed. Congress has the right to fully understand and vet that process.”
Dominguez said the Air Force museum, Houston, Chicago and other competing locations will receive from NASA parts of the orbiters and simulators that were used to train astronauts.
The Air Force museum is to receive items including a shuttle main engine; crew compartment training simulator; orbiter nose cap assembly; a thruster unit, two orbiter tires and a Skylab model, officials said.
The Air Force museum will continue with plans to construct a fourth building that is to open in 2014 and house the Space Gallery, Global Reach Gallery and Presidential Gallery, Jack Hudson, the museum’s director, told the crowd Tuesday. The separate Air Force Museum Foundation has raised about $20 million in pledges toward the project, now estimated to cost $47 million, museum spokesman Rob Bardua said.
The museum was disappointed with NASA’s decision but accepts it, Hudson said.
“We respect the decision and wish the winners the best,” he said.
Bolden made his announcement outside the Kennedy Space Center during a ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle launch in 1981.
Bolden signaled that he had heard criticism of his orbiter decisions. When the Florida crowd applauded in anticipation of Bolden’s announcement that Kennedy Space Center would get a shuttle, he said: “You have no idea what that applause does for me. I’ve had a rough day.”
Brown, the Ohio senator, questioned why the Midwest was shut out.
“NASA ignored the intent of Congress and the interests of taxpayers. NASA was directed to consider regional diversity when determining shuttle locations,” Brown said. “Unfortunately, it looks like regional diversity amounts to which coast you are on, or which exit you use on I-95. Even more insulting to taxpayers is that, having paid to build the shuttles, they will now be charged to see them at some sites.”
NASA told the shuttle-pursuing institutions months ago that it would cost each site $28.8 million for display preparation tasks ($20.8 million) and transport of the orbiter ($8 million), in order to defray costs to American taxpayers.
NASA itself is bearing millions of dollars in costs to remove fuel and any other toxic materials from the orbiters, to make them safe for public display.
According to NASA, the preparation and transport costs to the shuttle-receiving institutions include production and installation of shuttle engine mockups, since NASA plans to keep the original engines; work on crew and payload compartments, and flying the orbiters to their new homes aboard the modified Boeing 747 planes that transport them.
Two shuttle flights remain, of the Endeavour and Atlantis, before the shuttle program officially ends this summer. Discovery made its last flight in March of this year. NASA is now cleaning up Discovery for its eventual display. The space agency has said it doesn’t expect to be ready to transfer the orbiters to their new homes until 2012.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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