HOUSTON — Houston has a problem with being snubbed as a destination for one NASA’s retiring space shuttles and 16 Texas congressmen Thursday threatened legislation to block one from going to New York City.
On Tuesday, NASA announced institutions in Los Angeles, Cape Canaveral, Fla., and outside Washington, D.C., would get retiring shuttles, while New York City’s Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum was awarded the Enterprise, a prototype that never left Earth.
On Thursday, 15 Republican House members and one Democrat wrote to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden demanding answers and warning “we will do everything in our power in Congress, including legislation to prevent funding of the transfer, to stop this wasteful decision” to give New York City the piece of space exploration history.
Its rightful place, they argued, was Houston’s Johnson Space Center, “the operational center of every US human space mission since June 1965.”
“The first word spoken on the moon landing was ‘Houston’, not New York City,” said Republican Rep. Ted Poe in a statement.
“NASA and the Johnson Space Center have been the home base for space exploration for decades. It defies logic for a shuttle to go to New York City, a place with no connection to NASA. It’s like putting the Statue of Liberty in Omaha.”
Poe was joined by his Republican colleagues Pete Olson, Michael Burgess, Joe Barton, Pete Sessions, Randy Neugebauer, Sam Johnson, John Carter, John Culberson, Kevin Brady, Ron Paul, Michael McCaul, Lamar Smith, Louie Gohmert and Blake Farenthold and Democrat Gene Green in signing the letter.
In the letter they said having three shuttles on the East Coast and one on the West Coast did not make “geographic sense” and asked Bolden, “Wouldn’t a more central location ensure that the highest number of Americans would be able to visit?”
The surviving family members of the deadly Columbia and Challenger shuttle accidents were quick to note Tuesday that all of the astronauts killed in those incidents were Houston residents. They called themselves “heartbroken” that the Texas city was left with only the promise of a few accessories to put on display.
“Home is where the heart is, and Houston has served as the heart of the space shuttle program since its inception nearly four decades ago,” the families said in a statement.
The Intrepid Museum, housed on an aircraft carrier docked on Manhattan’s West Side, said it would make a good home for the Enterprise.
“We are excited and honored to have been chosen as a home for the Enterprise, and to help perpetuate the legacy of one of our country’s greatest technological achievements,” museum president Susan Marenoff-Zausner said in a statement.
“On behalf of everyone at the Intrepid, our thanks go out to NASA for recognizing that New York City will be a great home for her.”