Houston, We've Had a Problem!

Houston we've had a problem: 'Space City' snubbed in bid for retired space shuttle

NASA administrator Charles Bolden announced today the four museums -- the Smithsonian Institution (Discovery), the California Science Center (Endeavour), Kennedy Space Center (Atlantis) and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum (Enterprise) -- that will receive space shuttles for public display after the fleet retires this summer.

As expected Houston, the home of human spaceflight, was snubbed.

It's a shame. Houston's campaign, Bring the Shuttle Home, probably deserves some blame for being late to the game in terms of politicking for an orbiter.

But I'm not sure any campaign could have saved Houston. The politics of this decision were pretty clear. President Obama appoints the NASA administrator, and Texas is a decidedly Republican state.

"It is sad and unfortunate that politics played such an obvious role in the placement of theses retiring Orbiters," said Texas Congressman John Culberson. "The thought of an Orbiter not coming home to rest at Space Center Houston is truly tragic. It is analogous to Detroit without a Model-T, or Florence without a da Vinci."

Under the present leadership in the White House and Congress Texas has clearly lost some of its juice, noted Robert Stein, a political scientist at Rice University: "l don't think we're that powerful in Texas anymore. We don't have the clout we once did."

Texas used to do well even under politically divided government in Washington with representatives like Sens. John Tower and Lloyd Bentsen working together. "Right now that's not happening. Many Republicans in the Texas delegation are ideologues and they can't see anyway to make a deal. That hurts the state when it comes to decisions like this."

The selection process was poorly conceived in the sense that NASA never clearly stated the criteria by which the orbiters would be parsed out. From some perspectives it seems ludicrous that Houston will not get one of the retiring birds.

"The shuttle really is a program initiated here in Houston," said George Abbey, former director of Johnson Space Center from 1996 to 2001. "We're the ones who came up with the concept. We designed it. We tested it. We operated it. Certainly Houston ought to be number one on the list."

It wasn't even in the top four.