Houston, we might get a shuttle.
On Thursday Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Ted Cruz introduced the Bring Space Shuttle Discovery Home Act, a bill that, if passed, will see Houston finally getting a space shuttle of its very own.
“I am proud to lead the effort to finally bring Discovery home to Houston, where future generations of Texans and Americans can come to learn about the city’s integral role in our nation’s space shuttle program,” Cornyn stated.
The space shuttle program toted astronauts to and from the International Space Station from its inaugural run in 1980 through its final flight in 2011. Throughout those years, every single flight was run through Mission Control over at the Johnson Space Center here in Houston.
In the waning days of the space shuttle program, NASA retired four shuttles which were then were sent to four different spots around the country to act as visible reminders of that period of the federal space program.
However, none of those shuttles were sent over to Houston, aka Space City.
Instead, while the Kennedy Space Center in Florida got a shuttle, the other three were awarded to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar Center in Virginia.
Despite being the home of human spaceflight and so many “Houston, we’ve got a problem” jokes, the city got nothing, a decision that both Cornyn and Cruz contend was a politically motivated snub from the Obama administration.
If that was the case, Cornyn and Cruz are now intent on setting the situation to rights.
“It is past time that the Space Center Houston Museum houses a space shuttle, given the unique relationship between the entire program and its support staff in Houston,” Cruz said in a statement.
Although the shuttles in Florida, New York and California are all part of museum collections and thus off limits, the Smithsonian’s shuttle, the Discovery, which was in service from 1984 through 2011, is still directly owned by the federal government. In other words, the Discovery doesn’t absolutely have to remain in Virginia if Congress opts to send it elsewhere, according to the proposed legislation.
The bill, filed jointly by Cornyn and Cruz proposes to, well, liberate the Discovery from its Smithsonian-based home in Virginia and haul it down to Houston. From there, according to the bill, the plan is to transfer the keeping of the shuttle to an unnamed nonprofit located near the JSC.
This move also has Gov. Greg Abbott’s full support, according to the release. “The first word spoken from the moon was ‘Houston,’” Abbott stated. “To honor that legacy, it’s long overdue for a retired NASA Space Shuttle to rest at Houston’s Johnson Space Center so Texans can see, learn from, and enjoy it for generations.”
So now we’ll see if this bit of legislation goes anywhere.
With the Trump administration in power, the Department of Government Efficiency still cutting broad swathes of the federal workforce and Abbott’s support, Cornyn (who just happens to be facing State Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton in a primary challenge) and Cruz just might pull this off.
