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Posted

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Space Shuttle Discovery could return to Texas

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 A bill introduced Thursday could help bring the Space Shuttle Discovery back home to Texas.

“The first word spoken from the moon was ‘Houston.’ To honor that legacy, it’s long overdue for a retired NASA Space Shuttle to rest at Houston’s Johnson Space Center so Texans can see, learn from, and enjoy it for generations,” said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.  

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The shuttle has been on display in Virginia since April 2012, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) transferred Discovery to the Smithsonian, according to the National Air and Space Museum.

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U.S. Senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, filed the Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act, which would allow the shuttle to be moved from the Smithsonian museum to a nonprofit near the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Discovery is the only shuttle still owned by the federal government.

Yes, let's take the shuttle from the Smithsonian and transfer it to some non-profit here in Texas, where it'll probably fall apart in the sun and humidity.

Thankfully it probably won't happen, but fucking A this timeline.

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Posted

Only about a decade and a half too late on this grift job. Sure would have been nice to have one of the shuttles in Houston but not at the expense of having on at the Smithsonian. Guessing this won't go anywhere anyway but even if it does how they hell do Rafael Cruz and John Cornyn exactly propose they move the shuttle to Houston? Both of the modified 747 transporter planes are retired and on display, and the one here in Houston has a high-fidelity mockup shuttle already on it and they aint taking that apart...

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Posted

NASA botched that by not having a nice place to display it.  That being said, bring the f’ing thing to Houston where it belongs.

My idea was to take the walls off of the Astrodome, plexiglass that thing (or something like that), put the shuttle in there and light it up at night so you can see it from 610.

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Posted
10 minutes ago, Parliament said:

You guys already have some of the Columbia.  How many Space Shuttles does Texas need?

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Posted
27 minutes ago, Bevo said:

Stupid political game when NASA didn't get one of the decommissioned space shuttles to begin with. 

Something something Schumer

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

The first word spoken from the moon was "That's", but facts don't matter anymore.  We have fucking morons in charge.

Or "Contact", depending on where you draw the line in terms of on the moon.  Either way, "Houston" came up much later.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Evil Bill Obrien said:

 how they hell do Rafael Cruz and John Cornyn exactly propose they move the shuttle to Houston? Both of the modified 747 transporter planes are retired and on display, and the one here in Houston has a high-fidelity mockup shuttle already on it and they aint taking that apart...

Just tow that sumbitch down I-81 and I-59 down to NASA.  Only 1,389 miles.  

Posted
4 minutes ago, ConferenceRoom said:

I’m a fan of the fully restored Apollo Mission Control myself.

IMG_6248.jpeg

One of my friends gave me a tour of Mission Control before they restored it.

 

IMG_7583.jpeg

IMG_7584.jpeg

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Posted
4 minutes ago, ConferenceRoom said:

I could have sworn I went in there for an elementary school field trip in the mid-90s. Way less appreciative back then. 

I did too.

User name almost checks out

Posted (edited)
50 minutes ago, Updawg said:

I was disappointed we didn’t get one at first but after touring the mockup and 747 I think we came out ahead.

100% Agree, being able to go inside the mockup Shuttle is very cool and they did a good job filling it out with real artifacts like the spacewalk tools and such on the inside. Favorite part of the whole thing is the little RC 747 they have on display that they used to figure out if it was even practical to do the 747 piggyback. 
 

edit: found a picture 

IMG_0884.thumb.jpeg.d7958a4392c08bc2aab0f379adbcc3ef.jpeg

Edited by Evil Bill Obrien
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Posted
47 minutes ago, ConferenceRoom said:

I’m a fan of the fully restored Apollo Mission Control myself.

IMG_6248.jpeg

The mind bottles when you try to imagine all the ass that those engineers were getting.

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Posted
3 hours ago, Evil Bill Obrien said:

that they used to figure out if it was even practical to do the 747 piggyback. 

There were a few nights at Dallas nightclub back in the day when I definitely spent a long amount of time scoping out a particular prospect to see if it would be practical to do the old "747 piggyback."  Vic Mackey woulda been proud.

Posted

Estimated cost of moving the shuttle:  $1 billion

 

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/why-are-two-texas-senators-trying-to-wrest-a-space-shuttle-from-the-smithsonian/

 

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Should the city of Houston, which proudly bills itself as "Space City," have a prized Space Shuttle orbiter on public display?

More than a decade ago, arguably, the answer was yes. After all, the Space Shuttle program was managed from Johnson Space Center, in southeastern Houston. All the astronauts who flew on the shuttle trained there. And the vehicle was operated out of Mission Control at the Houston-based facility.

 

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But when the final decisions were being made to distribute the shuttles 15 years ago, the Houston community dragged its feet on putting together a competitive proposal. There were also questions about the ability of Space Center Houston to raise funding to house the shuttle within a new display area, which magnified concerns that the historical vehicle, like a Saturn V rocket before it, would be left outside in the region's humid environment. Finally, other cities offered better proposals for displaying the shuttles to the public.

In the end, the four shuttles were sent to museums in Washington, DC, New York, Florida, and California.

 

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And that was all more or less settled until last week when the two US senators from Texas, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, filed the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act" to move Space Shuttle Discovery from its current location at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Houston.

 

Spoiler

The space collectibles news site, CollectSpace, has a good overview of why this move is stupidly impractical. Essentially, it would easily cost $1 billion to get one of the two shuttle aircraft carriers back into service and move Discovery, it is unclear where the shuttle could survive such a journey in its current state, and the Smithsonian is the nation's premier museum. There's a reason that Discovery, the most historical of the three remaining shuttles that have gone to space, was placed there.

After the senators announced their bill, the collective response from the space community was initially shock. This was soon followed by: why? And so I've spoken with several people on background, both from the political and space spheres, to get a sense of what is really happening here. The short answer is that it is all political, and the timing is due to the reelection campaign for Cornyn, who faces a stiff runoff against Ken Paxton.

Paxton is the attorney general of Texas. In 2020, several high-level assistants in his office accused Paxton of "bribery, abuse of office, and other crimes." Later, the Republican-dominated Texas House impeached him by a vote of 121–23. However, after the 2020 presidential election, Paxton led the way in filing lawsuits that sought to overturn the results. So the MAGA base loves him. Cornyn, therefore, may well lose the runoff.

NASA wants no part of this
Here's what we know about the legislation, which is, in DC parlance, a "messaging bill." Cornyn is behind this, and Cruz simply agreed to go along. The goal in Cornyn's campaign is to use the bill as a way to show Texans that he is fighting for them in Washington, DC, against the evils there. Presumably, he will blame the Obama administration, even though it is quite clear in hindsight that there were no political machinations behind the decision to not award a space shuttle to Houston.

Space Center Houston, which would be responsible for hosting the shuttle, was not even told about the legislation before it was filed. NASA, too, is not a willing party. The space agency does not want to have to find retirees who worked on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft decades ago to work to try to refurbish one of them. The most flight-ready aircraft of the two had its orbiter attachments removed, needs new engines, and would have to be recertified to return to flight. "We don't want any part of this," one NASA official told Ars.

It seems unlikely that this is a punitive bill toward the Smithsonian. It just happens that, according to Cornyn's office, Discovery is the only shuttle still "owned" by the federal government and therefore eligible to be transported.

The bottom line is that two Texas senators want taxpayers to spend at least $1 billion to remove the most historic Space Shuttle from the most historic spaceflight museum in the world, possibly break it in an across-the-country move, and then put it in a nondescript warehouse in Houston. I am a huge space buff who lives just a few minutes away from Space Center Houston. Even I can recognize this for the colossally stupid idea that it is.

 

Posted
On 4/11/2025 at 1:01 PM, Samson's Wig said:

The first word spoken from the moon was "That's", but facts don't matter anymore.  We have fucking morons in charge.

 

On 4/11/2025 at 1:07 PM, Samson's Wig said:

Or "Contact", depending on where you draw the line in terms of on the moon.  Either way, "Houston" came up much later.

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” 

Posted
6 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Estimated cost of moving the shuttle:  $1 billion

 

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/why-are-two-texas-senators-trying-to-wrest-a-space-shuttle-from-the-smithsonian/

 

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

The space collectibles news site, CollectSpace, has a good overview of why this move is stupidly impractical. Essentially, it would easily cost $1 billion to get one of the two shuttle aircraft carriers back into service and move Discovery, it is unclear where the shuttle could survive such a journey in its current state, and the Smithsonian is the nation's premier museum. There's a reason that Discovery, the most historical of the three remaining shuttles that have gone to space, was placed there.

After the senators announced their bill, the collective response from the space community was initially shock. This was soon followed by: why? And so I've spoken with several people on background, both from the political and space spheres, to get a sense of what is really happening here. The short answer is that it is all political, and the timing is due to the reelection campaign for Cornyn, who faces a stiff runoff against Ken Paxton.

Paxton is the attorney general of Texas. In 2020, several high-level assistants in his office accused Paxton of "bribery, abuse of office, and other crimes." Later, the Republican-dominated Texas House impeached him by a vote of 121–23. However, after the 2020 presidential election, Paxton led the way in filing lawsuits that sought to overturn the results. So the MAGA base loves him. Cornyn, therefore, may well lose the runoff.

NASA wants no part of this
Here's what we know about the legislation, which is, in DC parlance, a "messaging bill." Cornyn is behind this, and Cruz simply agreed to go along. The goal in Cornyn's campaign is to use the bill as a way to show Texans that he is fighting for them in Washington, DC, against the evils there. Presumably, he will blame the Obama administration, even though it is quite clear in hindsight that there were no political machinations behind the decision to not award a space shuttle to Houston.

Space Center Houston, which would be responsible for hosting the shuttle, was not even told about the legislation before it was filed. NASA, too, is not a willing party. The space agency does not want to have to find retirees who worked on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft decades ago to work to try to refurbish one of them. The most flight-ready aircraft of the two had its orbiter attachments removed, needs new engines, and would have to be recertified to return to flight. "We don't want any part of this," one NASA official told Ars.

It seems unlikely that this is a punitive bill toward the Smithsonian. It just happens that, according to Cornyn's office, Discovery is the only shuttle still "owned" by the federal government and therefore eligible to be transported.

The bottom line is that two Texas senators want taxpayers to spend at least $1 billion to remove the most historic Space Shuttle from the most historic spaceflight museum in the world, possibly break it in an across-the-country move, and then put it in a nondescript warehouse in Houston. I am a huge space buff who lives just a few minutes away from Space Center Houston. Even I can recognize this for the colossally stupid idea that it is.

 

Can we use school vouchers for that billion dollars?

Posted
Just now, Brisketexan said:


Absolutely not, those dollars are needed to educate our precious children.

Now, PUBLIC SCHOOL dollars….yeah, we can use the hell outta those.

Space Shuttle Discovery, brought to you by AISD. 

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Samson's Wig said:

Fair enough. The way they should describe it, is first meaningful words outside of the more banal NASA/flight comms. Which is funny because Houston by default was actually one of the the most common words overall throughout all the flight comms. So I guess I played myself there. 
 

Who cares really. Still incredible what humans can truly accomplish with a common goal in mind. Some of the new docs with the remastered footage makes me wish I could have grown up during that era. Some kind of badass people. Legends.

Edited by Wilcox Cummingtonite
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