Help Bring the NASA Space Shuttle to the Intrepid

Officials at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum are hoping that when the NASA Space Shuttle fleet is retired, currently scheduled for 2012, that one of the classic white and black orbiters will make its home at the Hudson River Park Pier 86, the location of the newly reopened Museum. The shuttle would become the star attraction at the Museum and join the British Airways Concorde, the Growler Nuclear Submarine and some 30 military aircraft on board the Essex Class Aircraft Carrier Intrepid.

President Bill White, of the Intrepid has applied to NASA to be considered the destination of one of the retiring space shuttles. NASA announced its intention to make three retiring shuttles available to educational institutions, science museums, and other organizations able to acquire and publicly display the Space Shuttle Orbiters and Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME). NASA issued the public Request for Information (RFI) late last year.

“We are uniquely positioned to be the recipient of one of these three national treasures,” said White. “The Intrepid has a proud history with NASA, serving as a primary spacecraft recovery vessel during 1960s. Having brought astronauts Young, Carpenter and Grissom back home from their missions to space, it is fitting that we would become a home to one of our nation’s space program’s most well-known and beloved icons, a shuttle orbiter.”

Helicopters from the Intrepid recovered astronaut Scott Carpenter, commander of the second manned orbital flight, on May 24, 1962. Carpenter’s Aurora 7 capsule overshot the landing area by 250 miles (402 km), delaying his recovery. On March 23, 1965, Intrepid helicopters picked up Gemini 3 astronauts John Young and Virgil "Gus" Grissom and their two-person capsule nicknamed "Molly Brown” after the popular musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown."

In addition, White says that the Intrepid Museum’s location offers the chance for the millions of yearly visitors to New York City to appreciate the shuttle, which has engaged the imaginations of an entire generation of Americans. White also predicted the shuttle’s addition to the exhibits at the Museum would further increase the already record number of visitors who have come to the museum since its November 2008 reopening.

The Museum has enlisted the support of NYC & Co., the city’s tourism agency, elected officials, and former astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Scott Carpenter, and Senator John McCain, who served aboard the USS Intrepid and is a board member.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s "50 by 15" campaign seeks to bring more than 50 million visitors to the Big Apple by 2015; three years after the shuttle could arrive at the Intrepid.