U.S. Air Force museum makes bid for space shuttle

April 6, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

DAYTON (AP) — The U.S. Air Force museum is making a bid to land one of NASA’s space shuttles after the fleet is retired in late 2010.

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley sent a letter to the space agency in March making the request. NASA hasn’t indicated when it will make a decision on where the retired orbiters will be displayed.

NASA spokesman Mike Curie said it is in everyone’s interest to find a location where the shuttles can be seen by the greatest number of people. One space shuttle appears headed to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

The Air Force museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton draws 1.3 million visitors a year. Museum director Charles Metcalf says a shuttle’s drawing power would push that to about 2 million.

Handling a preservation assignment as massive as a shuttle would be a unique challenge that few other than NASA and the Air Force museum are equipped to handle, Metcalf said.

“You better know what you’re doing,” he said.

NASA plans to retire Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour by Sept. 30, 2010, in keeping with former President George Bush’s initiative of returning astronauts to the moon. A new spaceship — a capsule called Orion sitting on top of a new rocket called Ares I — will not be ready until March 2015, which means the U.S. must rely on Russia for rides into orbit in the interim.

NASA estimates it will cost about $42 million to get each retired shuttle ready for display. That includes $6 million to ferry the spaceship atop a modified jumbo jet to the closest major airport.

The Air Force museum would accept any of them but has stated a preference for Atlantis because it took military payloads into orbit, Metcalf said.

The museum’s fund-raising foundation has already raised $15 million toward the cost of a $40 million new exhibition building.

A shuttle could housed in the new building, which would also display the Air Force’s massive C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft and former Air Force One planes that carried U.S. presidents, Metcalf said.