New York City Just Got a Space Shuttle That Has Never Been to Space

The ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the first Space Shuttle launch featured a teary-eyed Charlie Bolton, the NASA administrator, answering the question space nerds across the country had been waiting to hear since the agency announced the end of the Shuttle program: what are you, uh, going to do with those spaceships over there?

Three of the orbiters are bound for a list of institutions that should come as no surprise given their links to Shuttle history: Kennedy Space Center, where the Shuttle launches and lands, California Science Center in Los Angeles, near where it was designed, and the Smithsonian in Washington, which is dedicated to aerospace history. The last orbiter will go to Intrepid Space Museum, the aircraft carrier docked in New York City – a surprise given the city's tenuous historical connection to the spaceship. It's only real link: after World War II, Intrepid helped pluck astronauts from the ocean after they returned to Earth. The Intrepid opened as a museum in 1982, a year after the first shuttle launch.

It's a success for Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, who had been lobbying NASA hard for their home state to get a spaceship. Other promising candidates, like Johnson Space Center, in Houston, and the Air Force Museum in Ohio will have to make do with a consolation prize pack of shuttle parts.

Before New Yorkers start getting too uppity about their spaceship win, we should keep in mind that this isn't really a spaceship. The Enterprise, which was named by a popular vote after the ship in Star Trek, was the first orbiter ever built, used to test the awesome, revolutionary craft's aerodynamics. But it never orbited space and was not equipped with engines or a heat shield. Though it was going to be the second orbiter after Columbia, NASA ran into cost overruns on the retrofit. Challenger was built instead.

To house the craft, Intrepid will build a new glass-walled hanger on Pier 86 – and, like the three other cities getting a shuttle, will pay about $28.8 million in shipping costs, for delivery in 2012. The Intrepid's concept calls for the shuttle's cargo bay doors to be open and for spacesuited dummy astronauts to be working with a satellite held by the orbiter's robotic arm. Unfortunately, neither the Intrepid nor the city have indicated how they intend to pay for any of this.

Space shuttle Discovery, NASA's oldest remaining orbiter and the world's most flown spacecraft, will go to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, at its Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles International Airport. Shuttle Endeavour, which will launch on its own final mission later this month, will be given to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. And Shuttle Atlantis, which will embark on the final Space Shuttle mission in June, will remain in Florida to be exhibited at the Kennedy Space Center's visitor complex.

The rest of the shuttle swag will go to other candidate cities:

- Various shuttle simulators for the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, the
Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum of McMinnville, Ore., and Texas
A&M's Aerospace Engineering Department

- Full fuselage trainer for the Museum of Flight in Seattle

- Nose cap assembly and crew compartment trainer for the National
Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in
Ohio

- Flight deck pilot and commander seats for NASA's Johnson Space
Center in Houston

- Orbital maneuvering system engines for the U.S. Space and Rocket
Center of Huntsville, Ala., National Air and Space Museum in
Washington, and Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

Read more on the Space Shuttle Motherboard.

Space.com