Texas lawmaker still has a problem with New York space shuttle retirement

Texas Rep. Ted Poe (R) is calling for NASA to re-evaluate its plans to give a retired space shuttle to New York instead of Houston.

Poe, whose district borders Houston, said that the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in Manhattan won the rights to house the Space Shuttle Enterprise in part because it planned to display the shuttle on the Hudson River.

But plans now call for the shuttle to be displayed in a museum to be built in a parking lot, which Poe said was a big enough change to warrant a reconsideration of Enterprise's final destination.

"As far as I'm concerned, it won't be final until it's sitting up there on the Hudson River where it's supposed to finally be," Poe, a four-term congressman, said this week in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.

Houston coveted one of four retiring space shuttles because of the city's long ties to the space program. NASA central command is located in Houston, the city is nicknamed the "Space City" and most of its sports teams have space-themed names, such as the Astros, Rockets and Comets.

But NASA decided this spring to give shuttles to museums in New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Florida, leaving Houston out in the cold — and red hot about it.

“Disappointed that the #spaceshuttle will not go to Houston’s JSC,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), whose district includes parts of Houston, said on her Twitter page the day the decision was announced, referring to Johnson Space Center.

“We are the home of human space flight," she said.

---