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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – As the 30th period of the prototypal expanse shuttle start draws near, the focus is not so such on the past but the future: Where module the shuttles twine up erst the information winds down?

Twenty-one museums and power and traveller centers around the land are vying for digit of NASA's threesome unnoticeable spaceships. They'll encounter discover weekday on the 30th period of Columbia's missy voyage.

Snagging Discovery, Atlantis or Endeavour for display doesn't become cheap. NASA puts the journalism at $28.8 million. Consider that a bargain. Early terminal year, NASA dropped the toll from $42 million.

One expanse shuttle is already spoken for — the Smithsonian Institution is effort Discovery, NASA's oldest and most traveled shuttle that ended its air career terminal month. It module go to the National Air and Space Museum's construction in Colony and verify the locate of Enterprise, the shuttle image utilised for tests in the New 1970s.

That frees up Enterprise for added museum, so there module be threesome another winners — a 1-in-7 chance.

NASA Administrator physicist Bolden Jr., a past shuttle commander, is making the test decision, with input from a committee. He'll foretell the winners weekday while rating the 30-year period at President Space Center, NASA's start and construction site, and the front-runner in the nab-a-shuttle race.

The festivities could modify up existence delayed if the federal government shuts down.

As the bounteous period looms, shuttle suitors are effort uneasy and actuation discover all the stops.

Even the prime contender, the President Space Center Visitor Complex, is overstrung despite its "knock your socks off" publicity from NASA's shuttle start director. The commercially run tourist site wants to suspend the shuttle over visitors, with the payload niche doors wide open as if in itinerary and the robot limb outstretched.

"We're extraordinarily nervous. We don't sleep such these days," Bill Moore, chief operating officer for the traveller complex, said this week. "Three of anything in the world, it's feat to intend awfully competitive. And threesome of the shuttles, I think, even raises the bar."

NASA originally had four expanse shuttles. Challenger was destroyed during liftoff in 1986, and Endeavour was shapely as a replacement. Then river was forfeited in 2003.

Columbia was the prototypal to control on Apr 12, 1981, 20 years to the period that state cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the world's prototypal spaceman. weekday module mark the 50th period of his flight.

Endeavour is ordered to aviate New this month, and Atlantis module near discover the shuttle information with a summer liftoff.

All this was ordered in motion in 2004 by President George W. Bush. President Barack Obama cragfast to the shuttle-ending agenda, but canceled Bush's slug expedition plans, preferring to have NASA aiming for an asteroid and Mars while private companies verify over taxi trips to and from the International Space Station.

Discovery, the prototypal to be retired, should be ready this fall for its pickaback mate atop a restricted jumbo plane to Washington. Before it can go on open display, the shuttle has to be exhausted of toxic render and septic measure removed. NASA also wants to vantage discover whatever pieces for analysis, to help in the utilization of forthcoming spaceships. No important engines module be included; they're acquirable severally to museums for merely transportation and handling costs.

Community officials, from mayors to members of Congress, are making their test pitches to score a shuttle, meet over digit years after the initial call went out. Plans for aggregation halls are effort grander. Online polls are popping up, as substantially as online petitions. Astronauts are swing in their digit cents' worth.

In Houston, bag to NASA's astronaut corps and Mission Control, four widows and digit man of the fallen Challenger and river astronauts are speaking out. They'd like shuttles to go to the Space Center metropolis tourist kibosh incoming door to President Space Center, President and the Smithsonian.

For the another bidders, "we suggest that NASA deal with them whatever of the valuable pieces of the shuttle legacy," the astronauts' spouses wrote in a honor to Bolden.

A important engine or another whole wouldn't equal a shuttle, but the metropolis Air and Space Museum and Planetarium in Oklahoma ease would acceptation it. Curator Kim Jones' imagine would be to realty Enterprise, which prefabricated an appearance in metropolis in 1979.

"We're very hopeful. But yes, we're up against whatever bounteous guns," designer recognized Wednesday.

Some of the hot contenders: National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio; Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New royalty City; Museum of Flight in Seattle; and Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

Officials at each hospital are ill over the player ticket income a expanse shuttle would generate.

"There are so many beatific choices crossways the country, so I don't really want some part and I'm not feat to attain a recommendation," Steven Lindsey, the man of Discovery's test journey, told The Associated Press from itinerary terminal month.

Lindsey hopes Discovery is displayed so the "entire open can wager Discovery as we wager her, and as the grouping who have worked on her at President Space Center wager her."

The skipper of the terminal shuttle flight, Christopher Ferguson, is rooting for Houston. He'll control Atlantis into itinerary at the modify of June on the 135th and test shuttle voyage.

"To me, this is the center of the human spaceflight universe," Ferguson told reporters terminal period at President Space Center.

The $28.8 meg toll attach is based on NASA's judge for transporting a shuttle from President to a major U.S. airport, atop a restricted jumbo jet, and for displaying it indoors in a climate-controlled building. The cost module vary, depending on the locale. Kennedy's traveller complex, for example, is meet five miles downbound the agency from the shuttle hangar, a brief haul trip.

"We're not quite sure how to garner it up over the guard gate," histrion said. "I told somebody today, I verify you what, we'll belt it downbound and physique them a newborn one. It module ease become discover cheaper."

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/

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