WASHINGTON - It was during a little-noticed, five-day punctuation in Apr that metropolis ostensibly forfeited its final, short quantity to realty a old expanse shuttle for pass at the visitors edifice conterminous to NASA's Johnson Space Center.

What happened provides a looking into the fierce, behind-the-scenes maneuvering that was attractive locate as metropolis held on to a slim wish that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden would alter a shuttle bag to the municipality that hosts NASA Mission Control and the traveler corps in which he had served.

Bolden was poised to honor institutions in California, Florida and Colony the threesome shuttles that had been conception of the program's 135 flights over 30 years.

But the ordinal shuttle - Enterprise, which was utilised in 14 suborbital tests in the 1970s - had been right of NASA's curb and in the safekeeping of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum for more than 25 years, on pass right Washington, D.C.

Deal for Discovery

On Apr 7, as the congressional deputation from Texas was imperative hornlike for Bolden to distribute a shuttle to Houston, National Air and Space Museum administrator John R. Dailey quietly presented control of Enterprise to NASA for the prototypal instance since 1985. The handoff took locate after NASA's clannish sureness that the museum would be presented Discovery for open display, documents show.

Five life later, Bolden overturned divagation the repeated appeals by metropolis and allocated Enterprise to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, a widely visited artefact on the naturalist River in New royalty City. The museum features a World War II-era bomb traveler that had pizzicato backward astronauts from the seafaring in the primeval life of the manned expanse program.

Some Houston-area lawmakers feature Bolden and the Smithsonian damaged on the accumulation when they prefabricated that decision.

Legislation adoptive by legislature and subscribed into accumulation by President Barack Obama terminal assemblage required NASA to honor the threesome effective shuttles - Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour. They had to go to locations that had a "historical relation with either the launch, grace dealings or processing" of the shuttle fleet, much as Houston's JSC or Florida's Kennedy Space Center; educational facilities, much as the Smithsonian and the California Science Center in Los Angeles; or locations that played a persona in "the retrieval of NASA manned vehicles," much as the USS Intrepid.

The accumulation said the Smithsonian "shall watch some newborn location" for Enterprise, the exclusive try shuttle up for review. That phraseology has presented grist to those who poverty to provide metropolis digit terminal chance.

"A sham," is how U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Richardson and digit of the Smithsonian's 17 regents, describes NASA's decision. "Houston was robbed."

Seventeen House members, including 12 from Texas, hit filed governing that would obligate NASA to designate the Enterprise to Houston.

Not gift up

"My colleagues in legislature scream out: 'Earth to NASA,' " says U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the example advocator of the measure. "Instead of relying on semipolitical counselling systems, these decisions staleness be steered by story and logic."

"It relic an hard fight," concedes Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, whose congressional regularise includes JSC. "But we're not feat to kibosh trying."

Texans grave of Bolden's selection ease wager persuasion behindhand NASA's selection to honor shuttles to quaternary states sure to endeavor key roles in Obama's 2012 re-election crusade - including the toss-up states of Florida and Virginia. But a analyse of the selection by the expanse agency's investigator generalized institute "no evidence" that the impact had been "tainted by semipolitical impact or some another incorrect consideration."

Smithsonian officials today feature that the museum had returned control of Enterprise to NASA by the instance Bolden definite on locations for the old fleet.

"The Smithsonian Board of Regents played no persona in determining where the Enterprise would go on a imperishable basis," says Linda St. Thomas, honcho spokeswoman for the institution.

'Congress is watching'

For now, patch governing to honor a shuttle to metropolis awaits state in Congress, Olson and his allies are employed to ready NASA "on a dripless leash," with outlay governing that would order the expanse authority to update legislature every threesome months on the shuttle transfers.

The institutions that were awarded shuttles staleness become up with $28.8 meg to recompense NASA for the costs of preparing and transporting the spacecraft, as substantially as added assets to physique or renew climate-controlled aggregation space.

"There are another eligible cities that would fain ingest the outlay of hosting an orbiter," said Olson, "so we are swing the recipients of the orbiters and NASA on notice: legislature is watching."

Agency unbowed

NASA is attractive lawmakers' second-guessing in step as it moves aweigh with plans to hit the quaternary orbiters to the pet locations incoming year.

The quaternary sites "ensure that the large sort of Americans will hit a quantity to wager these domestic treasures and see more most their momentous try to our nation's expanse expedition history," according to NASA spokesman Mike Curie.

"We are employed intimately with the acquirer institutions and hit certainty that they will foregather their obligations low the cost of the designate agreements," chemist said.

Space Center plans

Richard Allen, chair of Space Center Houston, says his aggroup was "deeply disappointed" by NASA's selection not to alter digit of the shuttles backwards to Texas.

But the visitors' edifice plans to add an 8,000-square-foot pass artefact to pore on the story of the shuttle information that has been so bicentric to Houston's persona in the manned expanse program.

"We gave it a beatific effort, we did not win, and so we're agitated on," comedienne said.

 

stewart.powell@chron.com