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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Booster ignition and the final liftoff of Discovery, a tribute to the dedication, hard work and pride of America's space shuttle team. The shuttle has cleared the tower.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, HOST:
That was the last time NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery launched into orbit more than 15 years ago. The shuttle flew 39 missions, and since 2012, it's been on display at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center in Northern Virginia. But that shuttle and that location are the focus of a fight playing out in Washington. The two U.S. senators from Texas say Discovery's rightful home is in Houston, home of NASA's mission control, and they secured $85 million in a budget passed last year to move it to the Lone Star state. But Joe Stief says that shouldn't be the end of the story. Stief lives in Virginia, and he mounted a campaign to stop the move. He's the founder of keeptheshuttle.org, and he joins us now. Welcome.
JOE STIEF: Thank you for having me.
FOLKENFLIK: OK, Joe, I'll bite. What's the affirmative case for keeping the space shuttle, Discovery, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a state from which the shuttle never departed, and in which it never landed?
STIEF: I think the argument really boils down to three words - it's the cost, it's the logistics and it's the precedent. The cost of moving the shuttle, as you noted, would be in excess of 85 million, what you noted that they allocated. NASA, the Smithsonian - they've provided estimates that the moving costs alone would be about double that number. And of course, then there's the cost of a new facility in Houston to house a shuttle. There's the logistics, which is an even larger challenge than that. The fact of the matter is is that the shuttles are enormous, they're very fragile and any process to move Discovery to Houston would be likely irreparably damaging the shuttle.
But then I think perhaps most important is the precedent. Discovery is part of the national collection at the Smithsonian. And if Discovery were to be taken from that, we would set a very terrible precedent that anything in the Smithsonian's collection, which is there for all Americans, is on display for really the world to see, but we'd be setting that precedent that anything could be taken from the collection, moved to another state just because one or two elected officials want to see that happen.
FOLKENFLIK: Let me press you just a little bit more on that. If you think about the Johnson Space Center in Houston, it plays a historic, even mythical, role in the space program, the story of the space shuttle. And beyond mission control, it's where astronauts have trained at the center there. Recognizing the cost, logistics, setting that aside for a moment, why shouldn't it be in Texas?
STIEF: There's certainly no debate that Houston and Texas' contribution to the Space program has been immense. I would be the first to admit that. But what I think is important to keep in mind is NASA ran a very thorough allocation process about 15 years ago when the shuttle program was winding down, and they found that the most appropriate locations for the orbiters were at the Smithsonian, which had always been slated to receive one, in Florida, in California and at the Intrepid Museum in New York. But they had a rubric. They had a process that they went through. And at the end of the day, Houston, unfortunately, didn't make the cut.
FOLKENFLIK: So this fight's been going on for years. The two Texas senators I mentioned, of course, are John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both Republicans who got that money set aside. They say the Obama administration, led by Democrats were playing politics in preventing Houston from getting a shuttle. What do you make of that claim?
STIEF: There's a couple of things that come to mind there. One is that NASA's OIG ran a process shortly after the decisions were made. This was about 15 years ago. They ran a process. They interviewed everyone involved.
FOLKENFLIK: When you say a process, is that an investigation?
STIEF: An investigation. That's correct.
FOLKENFLIK: I see.
STIEF: So they ran a full investigation, issued a report where they found that there had been no political pressure, there had been no personal favors or the like. And in fact, that's the report where it came out that NASA's administrator, Charles Bolden, at the time, he would have preferred to have sent a shuttle to Houston, but he was committed to following the process. But then there's also the fact that, you know, it's been 15 years now, and there's been no further evidence to support that claim that there was any political maneuvering going on in the background.
FOLKENFLIK: All right. So you started Keep The Shuttle to try to prevent that move down to Texas. Why did Joe Stief start this campaign?
STIEF: So I grew up in the D.C. area, a huge space nerd, like a lot of kids that grew up during the shuttle program. I took my parents - dragged my parents, perhaps - down to the Air and Space Museum as much as I could as a kid. And while I didn't end up working for NASA or in aerospace, it's always been a lifetime passion to the point that my wife and I actually had our wedding at Udvar-Hazy. We got married at Discovery's nose, and then we had the reception in the back by the engines. And so...
FOLKENFLIK: No kidding.
STIEF: We did. And so I certainly recognized that I had a little bit of a unique story and that that might give a little bit of an edge in getting the ball rolling here. But I also knew that there were thousands, millions of folks that had a special connection to the shuttle program that remembered it as a kid or seeing it fly as an adult, and in some cases, even worked on the program.
FOLKENFLIK: One last question. If the shuttle were to be sent back, how would it be done safely?
STIEF: I'm not sure there is a way to safely move the shuttle to Houston. So a lot of systems would be damaged if you had to cut the shuttle up into pieces. It's not something that any of the orbiters were ever designed for. But then, since there are no longer specially modified 747s NASA used during the shuttle program to transport the shuttle whole, since those are now decommissioned, they're museum pieces, instead, you would be looking at a 40-mile tow through northern Virginia, predominantly Fairfax County. And then a barge ride all the way down the East Coast, through the Gulf and to Houston.
And just that 40-mile tow through Northern Virginia would be a significant logistical challenge. We know this because they had to tow one of the other shuttles, Endeavour, about 10 miles - so a quarter of the distance - through Los Angeles to get her to the museum there. And that involved cutting down hundreds of trees and removing traffic signals and power lines. They had to shut down roads for days. It was a whole logistical challenge, and I don't think it's something that Northern Virginia or Fairfax County are going to be up for.
FOLKENFLIK: Joe Stief is the founder of keeptheshuttle.org. Thanks again for joining me, Joe.
STIEF: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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