The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, located in New York City, is honored to be the new home of Enterprise. We look forward to sharing the legacy of NASA and the Shuttle with New York City, its neighbors and visitors.
• Maximum Exposure for the Shuttle: NYC offers the greatest potential audience with which to share the Shuttle and its story – 15 million residents; 45 million tourists and nearly 1 million annual visitors to Intrepid.
• Educational Impact: The Shuttle will be an educational tool for future generations. NYC offers the largest potential pool of students to learn about the Shuttle. There are over 1 million students in the NYC public school system, let alone the additional students in the tri—state areas of NY, NJ and CT and the many institutions of higher learning. Intrepid already has an expansive educational program in place, serving close to 100,000 school children annually. With Intrepid’s own tie to NASA, these educational programs already incorporate space exploration and therefore are a perfect platform upon which to build Shuttle themes.
• Intrepid’s Historic Connection to Space Program: The USS Intrepid served as a NASA recovery vessel in the 1960’s for some of the earliest manned space flights. On May 24, 1962, helicopters from Intrepid picked up astronaut Scott Carpenter, commander of the 2nd manned orbital flight, as part of the Mercury 7 Mission. Then on March 23, 1965, Intrepid helicopters picked up Gemini 3 astronauts John Young and Virgin ‘Gus’ Grissom and also recovered their two person capsule, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”.
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The USS Intrepid served as one of NASA's Prime Recovery Vessels for Mercury and Gemini Missions. Scott Carpenter and Astronaut John Young describe their experiences in orbit.
