Space shuttle Enterprise suffers damage in ferocious storm

NBCNews.com ^ | Oct 30, 2012 | Robert Z. Pearlman

[tanknetter]

partially damaged?

Looks like the tip of the vertical stabilizer was sawed off by that strip of tent/bubble.

The sad story of Enterprise going to NYC is pretty convoluted. NASA violated its own donation rules to send it there, and Chuck Schumer was bragging about it an hour before the official announcement. The Intrepid folks bounced the right wingtip off of a retaining wall while barging her over from JFK and then effected a repair using black spraypaint.

The situation with her is a real mess. I remember seeing her the first day they opened NASM Udvar-Hazy. She was in rough shape having sat in a non-climate-controlled barn on Dulles Airport for almost 20 years. I watched (being a regular at the museum) as NASM staff painstakingly restored her to a condition befitting her stature as the first, prototype, space shuttle. And I remember immediately thinking "they're going to ruin her" when the announcement was made that she was going to Intrepid.

Intrepid is a fine museum, but they're pretty overextended. They're having a hard time maintaining their Concorde (which is out in the elements), have had to find other homes for two other ships they couldn't maintain and the whole "Enterprise in a Tent" scheme was designed to drive quick revenue rather than preserve a national treasure.

Maybe, if he's elected, Romney will appoint a NASA director who will exercise NASA's right to reclaim her and place her with a more fitting caretaker.

[tanknetter]

Hmmmm ... here’s an idea. Maybe Romney should go to the NMUSAF in Dayton and given a speech talking about all the problems with Enterprise being up in NYC, the politicization of the selection process for where she went and the like.

Then finish by promising to send her somewhere more fitting. Like NMUSAF.

Ohioans were TICKED that they didn’t get an orbiter. NMUSAF wanted Atlantis, but I think they’d settle for Enterprise. AND they have the resources to fix all the damage done to her by NYC.