Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Shuttle Contenders Upset With NASA Selections

This just in from Bart Jansen of the Gannett Washington Bureau:

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers from states that weren’t named on Tuesday to receive a retired space shuttle threatened investigations and said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden didn’t follow the law.

Texas, where Johnson Space Center is home to mission control for shuttle missions, and Ohio, home of the Wright brothers, were among states that lost out in the competition for four orbiters.

Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas noted -- as she has many times recently in pushing for her state to get a shuttle -- that federal law says locations with a historic relationship to the space program should get first dibs on a retired shuttle.

"I just fail to believe that the law was followed," Hutchison said. "I'm very disappointed."

Tuesday’s announcement also came as a major let-down to Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

Brown pointed out that the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in his state was the only would-be shuttle location mentioned in President Barack Obama's fiscal 2012 budget proposal, which called for spending $14 million to prepare the base for the Atlantis orbiter.

Brown said he’ll ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate what he called the lack of geographic diversity in the winning cities, all located near a coast.

"What's wrong with middle America these days?" Brown said.

Check out the full story in the Wednesday editions of FLORIDA TODAY.

ABOUT THE IMAGE: Click to enlarge the NASA image of the orbiter Atlantis landing on Runway 33 at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida after 11 days in space, completing the 4.5-million mile STS-129 mission on orbit 171. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

1 comment:

Jumpin' Jack said...

Dear Florida,

We've spent hundreds of billions on you.

It's time to STFU.

Sincerely,
The rest of the nation