Houston, you've got a space shuttle only NASA won't say which one | Hacker News Reader

Houston, you've got a space shuttle only NASA won't say which one

arstechnica.com

12 pointsLorenDB6 comments

This one blows my mind.

Discovery was kept in as close to as-flown condition as possible to be the vehicle of record for future research. No museum on the planet is better equipped to handle things like that than the Smithsonian.

Hopefully the title transfer is enough to protect it from moving. Certainly 80 million isn't enough to restore an SCA and construct a building to house the orbiter.

Now, maybe things are very different at the top but my understanding is that museums don't pay to have things restored. It's a combination of volunteers and businesses donating labor/facilities/materials and the restoration gets performed over time and is itself a "profit" creating exhibit before the end product goes on display as a normal exhibit. The $80mil would just need to be the facility and the hauling.

It would seem to me that there’s a pretty, pretty big difference between relying on a half-dozen 80-year-olds to restore some forgotten warbird on a volunteer basis, and maintaining stewardship of an irreplaceable and literally priceless national asset.

My primary objection to this is that Space Center Houston is terrible. Udvar-Hazy is a way, way better home.

I've never been to Houston so take the following with a grain of salt:

Is the space center in Houston "terrible" or is it "niche"? Like for a lot of people being able to get up close to a huge portion of the space program hardware even if you're basically doing so in a laydown yard in the Texas heat (which is what Google makes Houston look like) staffed by people who do only space. If it's where all the space stuff is maybe it's where a shuttle belongs?

The Smithsonian is "fine" but it's also a discontinuous and uninspiring "best of" list of exhibits. Basically just the stuff a 12yo will read about in an entry level book or some 10min youtube video will blab about. Like don't get me wrong, they're great and full of cool stuff but basically no item in the whole place is done justice. I am very sympathetic to the idea that a lot of those items deserve to be in locations where they are the crown jewel or part of a theme whereas at the Smithsonian they're "just" another historically groundbreaking aircraft. Like don't get me wrong, it's still really cool but it's just about the least inspiring "serious aviation display" I've been to. I wish they'd have some F-ing enthusiasm and do something that isn't all "government and sterile".

Oh, and to anyone choosing between Downtown and Dulles, go to Dulles.

> Oh, and to anyone choosing between Downtown and Dulles, go to Dulles.

Why not just go to both? :)

I will give a little laugh if Houston ends up with a space shuttle Columbia memorial.

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