Avation/Spaceflight fans! Are you in a betting mood?

Tomorrow (ironically, on the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's flight), NASA will announce which museums will display the surviving Shuttle Orbiters after their impending retirement.

My Guesses:

Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, Washington DC. (duh, that's a gimme)

Museum of Flight, Seattle WA. (c'mon..they gotta send one out West-they pay taxes too)

The KSC Visitor Museum Complex, Cape Kennedy FL.

I think my MoF guess has the biggest chance of being wrong. I don't see it going to Huntsville, The Intrepid always gets passed over, Dayton's got a shot, but the pacifists might growl (as would every Navy Pilot who's been a Shuttle CDR-hell, maybe it should go to Pensecola! ).

I think Houston really has a chance. New building, and "Mission Control" has always had the short end of the stick on exhibits. Here's a link to some of the proposals, reason I picked MoF is that they've already broken ground.
http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-032911b.html

Anyone else? Appleseed, I know you dig flight..

I thought the KSC already had one.

Toyman01 wrote: I thought the KSC already had one.

They've got a mockup, IIRC. I'm talking the last three real ones. Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour. The glide test orbiter, "Enterprise" is the one on display at S'sonian A&S.

Huntsville has a mock up already. They could put one here though so it can be displayed with one of the remaining Saturn V rockets at the U.S Space and Rocket Center.

Your west coast guess is wrong. Smart money is on the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, OR. http://www.evergreenmuseum.org/

KSC keeps one, the Smithsonian in DC gets one, and Enterprise will get shipped somewhere else, probably Huntsville.

Discovery is already promised to the Smithsonian.

Huntsville's museum is all about what Huntsville put up into space. It is good, and cool, but mostly revolves around their rockets and what was sitting on the pointy end. It is also out of the way unless you are going to Huntsville for business.

I'd bet MoF over Huntsville based on access to the town. However, HSV does a great job of explaining the engines of those rockets for the gear head. Pretty neat.

I'm hoping for the Intrepid. They did a reallly nice job overhauling it .

Wait, doesn't Huntsville already have a shuttle on display at the Space camp site?

I'm sure the mere suggestion is going to enrage all you Americans, but it would be cool if one of them went to the technology museum in Sinsheim, Germany. They already have a freaking Buran (the Soviet version), among other things. Plus, then I could go see it easily.

The one here is a mock up, not the real thing. I do think Huntsville needs one, mainly because most of the work was done here. My Dad did quite a bit of work on it himself, first seeing the plans in the late '60's. At one point he worked in the building where they were keeping Enterprise during it's flight testing. It's really cool up close.

And while not a vacation destination, the museum is very easy to get to. It's right off the main interstate heading into town. Just in case you can't spot it, it's the one with the rockets and the SR71 out front!

Only place close enough for me to see it is the Air Force Museum in Dayton. Probably too close to D.C. though.

yeah, I'm rooting for Dayton too! We'll find out shortly I guess....

Intrepid got the Enterprise.

Nothing for Dayton, but that was expected, what with the NASA/Air Force rivialry.

Atlantis stays at KSC in Canaveral, FL. Discovery goes to the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy at Dulles in VA and allows the Enterprise already there to be transferred to the USS Intrepid in NYC. The shocker is that Endeavor goes to the California Science Center in LA! It's kind of hard to believe that neither Evegreen in McMinnville, OR (Spruce Goose is there for craps sakes!) nor the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA get anything.

Granted, there is a "fake" shuttle already at KSC that can be thrown to somebody. I know Evergreen's building was designed to hold an orbiter on the tank and boosters, and NASA has a fake set of those kicking around somewhere, too...

There is a science center in LA............???

What's going where

So the State of California is so broke it cannot pay it's own employees, but it has the ~$22 million to transport an Orbiter to LA and then display it? Boggles the mind...

Pretty sure the State is not paying - CNN report I read said that the museum is planning a fund raiser - total cost of new wing + moving orbiter = $200 million!

Wow! I never saw the LA move. I guess they think more people will get to see it there. I wonder if the KSC display will turn out as cool as the Sat 5 museum..

http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/apollo-saturn-v-center.aspx

30 years ago today

Flounder alert, flounder alert! Aooooogha! Aooogha!

So were the NY and CA sites selected because they are reliable Blue States? Houston and Huntsville left out even though they both have strong ties to the shuttle program, but exist in Red States.

If you go purely by trying to maximize the number of visitors then the choices they made make sense to me, but I'm sure there will be talk of shenanigans. Too bad they can't all stay in KSC and that would free up $100 million that could be used to something more productive.

I don't know about the place in CA, but the Intrepid is a privately run museum who has been collecting donations and spending a lot of money of renovations and exhibits. They have been running a substantial campaign to try and get a shuttle here since it was first announced.

I'm hopping for Chicago. I saw a proposed housing (on the old Meigs Feild?) If only because I'm selfish and Chicago's close.

Wally wrote: I don't know about the place in CA, but the Intrepid is a privately run museum who has been collecting donations and spending a lot of money of renovations and exhibits. They have been running a substantial campaign to try and get a shuttle here since it was first announced.

Y'know Wally, I didn't realize until I looked at their proposal sketches on space.com that the Intrepid Museum had grown so much. I didn't realize they had that much room. I'd forgotten their Concorde exhibit, I guess I passed em over with visions of a Shuttle sitting on the flight deck next to the Cutlasses.