Metro

Wasn’t enough ‘space’: Enterprise damaged on barge journey

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM:The space shuttle Enterprise, traveling aboard a barge, heads into a tight spot next to a bridge in Jamaica Bay before scraping against the structure’s wooden piling bumpers and mangling the tip of its right wing.

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM:The space shuttle Enterprise, traveling aboard a barge, heads into a tight spot next to a bridge in Jamaica Bay before scraping against the structure’s wooden piling bumpers and mangling the tip of its right wing. (Dennis jenkins/CollectSpace.com)

(Dennis Jenkins/CollectSpace.com)

Uh, oh, better get Maaco.

The space shuttle Enterprise was involved in a fender bender when its wing struck a piling as it was being moved by barge in Jamaica Bay, officials said yesterday.

The retired NASA spacecraft was traveling to a Jersey City marina on Sunday for a brief stay when its right wing tip was damaged by wooden pilings under a railroad bridge a few hundred yards from the Cross Bay Bridge.

“A sudden microburst of wind, measured at 35 knots, caused the . . . protective [foam] layer of the wing tip of the Enterprise to graze the protective wood piling bumpers in the water,’’ said Luke Sacks, a spokesman for the Intrepid Air and Space Museum, where the shuttle is headed.

“There was no damage to the bridge and light cosmetic damage to the protective layer.”

He said the accident would not impact the shuttle’s delivery.

An engineer aboard the barge transporting the craft to Weeks Marina called its passage by the bridge “narrow, with only a few feet clearance on each wing tip.”

“Mother Nature did not smile on us. Just as the barge entered the railroad bridge, the wind caught it,” the consulting engineer, Dennis Jenkins, said on the Web site collectSPACE.

The shuttle had been set to make its final trip to the Intrepid today, but bad weather has delayed it, officials said. It is now set to be transferred tomorrow.