John Cornyn and Ted Cruz want to relocate a NASA space shuttle to Houston. Is the risky move worth it?
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/space/article/move-space-shuttle-discovery-houston-20287189.php
John Cornyn and Ted Cruz want to relocate a NASA space shuttle to Houston. Is the risky move worth it?
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/space/article/move-space-shuttle-discovery-houston-20287189.php
31 Comments
Is this the fraud and waste DOGE is trying to find??
My tax dollars at work. Are they positive this is the best use of our time and money? Is everything important taken care of. Im sure you could get some AI photos of you standing in front of stuff for your campaign much cheaper!
I’m in favor of the move, as long as the shuttle can be parked directly on top of Cruz.
Couldn’t that money be better spent on more tax breaks for the 1%?
They want to steal it from its current museum, the air and space museum at Dulles. It’s a really great museum and you should see the shuttle there.
Which one of them has a cousin in the moving business?
No. No it isn’t.
The sheer cost of the move is staggering. You’re talking about lugging a space shuttle over American highways from Dulles VA to Houston (which already has a shuttle mockup) so Ted Cruz can stroke his ego. The shuttle cannot be disassembled. There is no way to make it a more manageable size or shape without damaging it.
You could use ocean shipping but you’re still moving it over US highways to get it out to the Potomac and then you’ve gotta protect it from seawater and corrosion. Flying is out too because you’d have to steal a shuttle carrier from either the exhibit in California or the one in Houston.
Not to mention you’re completely destroying an entire exhibit at Udvar Hazy that’s almost exclusively centered around the shuttle to bring it to Houston which has nowhere to display it. It’s already been restored and preserved, a process that would have to be repeated after the transportation. There’s about a million things that could go wrong leading to the damage or destruction of original material on the oldest surviving fully functional space shuttle.
It’ll then be dropped into a city almost nobody visits instead of remaining in a federal museum next to an international airport that feeds tourists into one of the most heavily trafficked cities in U.S. which happens to be our nation’s capitol. Did I mention that Udvar gets roughly 3 million visitors a year vs Houston’s 1 million. I can FUCKING GUARANTEE Moving the space shuttle will not up the tourism to Houston so you’re wasting billions just to give people less reasons to go spend money at the air and space museum.
Ted Cruz should focus on maybe one of the thousands of social issues in Houston instead of attempting to plunder the air and space museum of its priceless artifacts.
I mean for fuck’s sake can’t he just go after a Mercury or an Apollo capsule or something? At least then you could fit it on a truck.
Those two she be dropped in the center of the Gulf of Mexico and made to swim back
How will they fund it? Oh right they expect the Smithsonian to foot the bill lmao
If it goes to Texas it’ll turn into that buran they found in a warehouse covered in dirt and debris
I’m genuinely on my hands and knees praying that this doesn’t pass.
I’m hoping that the republicans are nationalist enough to keep the shuttle in DC and not stupid enough to rush a 90-day dash to Houston that would involve disassembling miles of roadway infrastructure or tearing apart the oldest and most historically significant shuttle.
If it does I at least hope the Smithsonian would try to get enterprise back but moving any space shuttle is just a bad idea in the current year.
How about furthering our space program now rather than living off the past
“John Cornyn and Ted Cruz”
Nightmare blunt rotation.
No, next question. This isn’t even worth talking about
Did a shuttle ever even launch or land there!?!? I get its Mission Control but there has to be better more deserving places than Houston
When was the space shuttle ever in Houston? It’s national property and in a national museum. This is stupid performative politics from people who should be doing their jobs.
I would not put something I want to keep for a long time in a place that can easily get hit by a major hurricane.
When do we get to stop letting the Republicans call themselves fiscally conservative? There hasn’t been a fiscally conservative president in my lifetime, and I’m 40.
Might be a good idea in that Floriduh is going to be under water
Whata stupid headline. When in history have either of those fucks ever had a good idea.
Its dumb and incredibly hypocritical. This administration is gutting the government because all government spending is supposedly a waste, yet they’re apparently cool with spending it on pet projects like this? Even if it wasn’t for the hypocrisy, The one they want to take is already exactly where it belongs, no other museum in the country is more worthy of a shuttle. I do think it’s a shame Houston didn’t end up with a real shuttle though, but that ship has sailed.
For the record, I’m a native Houstonian, I’ve lived here my entire life.
I disagree with moving it, it’s too costly, and gets more visitors at the Smithsonian.
Having said that, this city is the home of NASA, mission control, the Johnson Space Center, and most astronauts have lived here and trained here at some point. Yet we were not awarded a shuttle after the program ended, and that struck a lot of us here the wrong way.
We are the 4th largest city in the country, and we’re kind of tired of being passed over and ignored, especially when it comes to space.
Not sure it can be done.
The space shuttle flew to Dulles on board a now decommissioned and highly modified 747.
The space shuttle is 5 stories tall, it ain’t fitting under a bridge unless its physically dismantled. They’re much better off trying to get New York’s shuttle or Florida’s and moving it by sea, but even then it’s a stupid idea.
Ted Cruz wants to defund NASA yet wants to have NASA museums and shit in his state?
Sour grapes on their part. Taken them 20+ years to think of it so, no.
Is there not one already there? If not, I’m surprised.
Many aerospace agencies have static displays, I see no problem in Houston having one.
“John Cornyn and Ted Cruz want to relocate a NASA space shuttle to Houston. Is the risky move worth it?” Yup, if they can be launched into a one way trip to the moon in it.
The most important part about moving the space shuttle to Houston is that the government has suspended due process and neither of these ass hats are doing their job.
You mean Rafael Edward Cruz? GOP is firmly against people using chosen names for themselves.
Texas already has Columbia, don’t they? Why should they get two shuttles?
No. They’re trying to loot the Smithsonian.
With budget cuts that are killing the scientific and cultural government agencies, why would taxpayers foot the enormous bill to move the shuttle and house it in Texas?
To hell with both of these parasites.
The cost of relocation and new display building is estimated at $ 1 BILLION …….(all paid by the US Gov)
I’m in Texas, and it is considered an election year joke !