The Shuttle Is A Treasure, Not A Trophy
Imagine this scenario and try not to roll your eyes.
You are in modern-day San Antonio. For generations, the Alamo has been a hub of local tourism. Visitors from all over the world flock there each day to hear about the battle for Texas independence and the legends of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and Sam Houston.
Lovers of history volunteer to work there, telling its stories and caring for the artifacts from the legendary Battle of the Alamo in 1836. But then one day, something weird happens.
Spain shows up, saying it wants the Alamo back. It was a Spanish mission after all, before it became famous. “Our missionaries designed it, operated and controlled it. It’s part of our heritage and we want it back. Find a way to send the Alamo back to Spain.”
Sounds ridiculous, right? But if you swap the words “Alamo” for “Space Shuttle,” and “send it to Spain” with “send it to Houston,” something just that silly is going on right now.
Thirteen years ago, the year after the Space Shuttle’s final mission in 2011, orbiter Discovery arrived at the Smithsonian’s Institution’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia. The Udvar-Hazy Center, which houses many of the world’s most historic aircraft and spacecraft, was built with the idea in mind that it would someday house a Space Shuttle as well.
Udvar-Hazy has held a Space Shuttle since they day it opened its doors to the public. It originally housed the prototype Shuttle Enterprise from 2004 until it was replaced by Discovery in 2012. Enterprise was later relocated to the Intrepid Museum in New York City.
Enterprise at the Udvar-Hazy Center
I have been to the Udvar-Hazy Center twice myself. The Udvar-Hazy display offers a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with the Shuttle. Visitors walk around the great ship, displayed as though it had just landed after a return from space. While its engines have been reused by another program, Discovery is closer to a flight-ready condition than any of its sister vehicles, with most of its other critical components still onboard. It is the purest example of what the Shuttle was still in existence.
The Smithsonian’s Washington, D.C., collection (including the Udvar-Hazy Center) includes many of the most storied aircraft and spacecraft ever flown. A very short list includes the original Wright Flyer, Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis,” the B-29 that dropped the Hiroshima atomic bomb, the first plane to fly around the world without refueling, the capsules that took the first American into orbit and the first Americans home from the Moon and the first privately built vehicle to carry a person to space.
Discovery is exactly where it needs to be, in the cradle of American aviation history. Yet years after it was delivered to the Smithsonian, there is a move on to take it back. It is a “Spain-reclaims-the-Alamo” caliber idea.
Congress has floated (and, unfortunately, started funding) a demand that Discovery be taken away from the Smithsonian and moved 1,400 miles to Houston. “The shuttle was designed here, controlled from here, its missions were planned here, the crews trained here and lived here. Give us Discovery.” You get the gist of the argument.
The question of where the retired Shuttles would be displayed was asked and answered a long time ago—or so we thought.
In addition to Discovery and Enterprise, orbiter Endeavour went to California, and Atlantis is on display at the Kennedy Space Center. Each of those locations stepped forward with vast sums of money to build impressive displays for these one-of-a-kind national treasures.
Houston did not. Houston took it for granted that it “deserved” an orbiter and let the opportunity pass it by. Wayne Hale, a retired flight director and former Shuttle Project Manager, once wrote that Houston’s lack of enthusiasm for its own legacy and future cost it a shot at a Shuttle: “Nope, Houston does not deserve an orbiter because Houston doesn’t care,” he wrote.
The list of locations around America that shared a page in the story of the Space Shuttle is long and distinguished. Most of them did not get an orbiter. The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, for example, had a powerful argument to house a Shuttle—one nearly as compelling as the Smithsonian’s.
In the 1970s, the Shuttle was designed in partnership with the military so that it could launch national security payloads. For a time, a Space Shuttle launch site in California was under construction exclusively to support Department of Defense missions. What landed in Dayton after the Shuttle was retired? A Shuttle crew compartment trainer, around which the museum took the initiative of building a nearly complete, walkthrough orbiter mockup.
Dayton’s Shuttle Mockup
Houston had its chance to make its argument, too. It failed.
Those making the argument to move Discovery to Houston would have you believe that the city was cheated out of its Shuttle legacy entirely. That is not true.
Houston already has its own relocated Shuttle, albeit also a mockup. Space Center Houston, the visitor complex for NASA’s Johnson Space Center, was awarded “Independence,” a complete, full-scale walkthrough Shuttle mockup that was moved there from the Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Complex. Independence sits atop NASA 905, the Boeing 747 that delivered Discovery to the Smithsonian on the grounds of Space Center Houston.
NASA 905 is itself a historic treasure. The aircraft took the Shuttles back to Florida after many of their missions to space and carried Enterprise aloft on the program’s first glide tests in 1977. During the Shuttle era, images of the Shuttle atop the 747 motherships were instantly recognizable. Lego just released a model of the famous pairing as part of its Icons Collection.
Houston was awarded one of only two 747s that ever handled that task. It also already has another gem of the golden age of human spaceflight: one of only three surviving examples of the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the Moon. This priceless piece of history sat outside, rusting in the elements from 1977 until it was restored and a “temporary” enclosure built around it in 2004. Twenty years later, it still sits in that nondescript, temporary corrugated metal building, with little around it to explain and explore the history of one of the greatest accomplishments of the 20th century.
Independence and NASA 905 In Houston
If the Saturn V’s fate is a hint of how a Space Shuttle orbiter would be treated in Houston, please leave Discovery where it is.
This brings me to the question of how one would even relocate a Space Shuttle the 1,400 miles from Washington, D.C. to Houston. The answer is succinct: You can’t.
Space Shuttle orbiters were only ever moved by road for a few miles. Upon their delivery to NASA, the first orbiters were towed from where they were built to a nearby Air Force Base to be flown to Florida. That was so onerous and expensive that the necessary infrastructure was installed at the plant so the orbiters could be flown out from there, avoiding the trek by road. When Endeavour was towed across Los Angeles after it was delivered there for display, it took two days to move just 12 miles. That move required the relocation of trees, light poles, power lines, street signs, and more.
Taking an orbiter apart for transport by highway is also out of the question. The Space Shuttle is the size of a DC-9 passenger jet—over 120 feet long and 78 feet wide. Tearing down the protective tiles and blankets that guarded the Shuttle during re-entry alone would ruin its historic integrity. Its individual wings, tail, fuselage, and crew cabin have been assembled since the 1970s and ’80s. Those skilled at building these great ships have long since retired—and probably would avoid helping tear one apart, even if they were not.
Houston’s Saturn V Display
What about shipping the Shuttle by sea, you ask? Also, wildly infeasible. Keeping an orbiter enclosed and safe during an ocean voyage would be a daunting technical challenge, one guaranteed to be expensive far beyond the worth of moving a Shuttle to Texas to serve as a political trophy.
When Enterprise was moved to New York City in 2012, it had to travel a short distance by barge from JFK International Airport to the Intrepid Museum. On the way there, it was bumped against a bridge, damaging its right wingtip. During Hurricane Sandy, the temporary enclosure covering Enterprise collapsed, snapping off the tip of its vertical tail and dropping the piece into the Hudson River.
Each of the four surviving Space Shuttles, on display now in locations that showcase their history and contributions to science, is a testament to audacity and ingenuity. They are also proof of what Americans did when they understood shared sacrifice and commitment to a goal.
They are not trophies to be grabbed and made off with in the name of political gain. They are priceless national treasures, the fight for which ended over a decade ago.
Discovery is especially historic, having flown many of the program’s most important missions. It launched the Hubble Space Telescope and helped build the International Space Station. It carried John Glenn back to space, 32 years after he became the first American to orbit the Earth. Discovery took America back to space on the first flights after the Challenger and Columbia tragedies.
Discovery belongs to all of us, not to the whims of a political moment.
Please, before you do something that cannot be fixed, leave Discovery and her sister ships alone.