Houston, we've had a problem Why are two Texas senators trying to wrest a Space Shuttle from the Smithsonian? This seems like a smart use of taxpayer money. Eric Berger – Apr 16, 2025 5:25 pm | 23 Space Shuttle Discovery as seen on display. Credit: The Smithsonian Space Shuttle Discovery as seen on display. Credit: The Smithsonian Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Should the city of Houston, which proudly bills itself as "Space City," have a prized Space Shuttle orbiter on public display? More than a decade ago, arguably, the answer was yes. After all, the Space Shuttle program was managed from Johnson Space Center, in southeastern Houston. All the astronauts who flew on the shuttle trained there. And the vehicle was operated out of Mission Control at the Houston-based facility. But when the final decisions were being made to distribute the shuttles 15 years ago, the Houston community dragged its feet on putting together a competitive proposal. There were also questions about the ability of Space Center Houston to raise funding to house the shuttle within a new display area, which magnified concerns that the historical vehicle, like a Saturn V rocket before it, would be left outside in the region's humid environment. Finally, other cities offered better proposals for displaying the shuttles to the public. In the end, the four shuttles were sent to museums in Washington, DC, New York, Florida, and California. Bring it back home And that was all more or less settled until last week when the two US senators from Texas, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, filed the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act" to move Space Shuttle Discovery from its current location the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Houston. The space collectibles news site, CollectSpace, has a good overview of why this move is stupidly impractical. Essentially, it would easily cost $1 billion to get one of the two shuttle aircraft carriers back into service and move Discovery, it is unclear where the shuttle could survive such a journey in its current state, and the Smithsonian is the nation's premier museum. There's a reason that Discovery, the most historical of the three remaining shuttles that have gone to space, was placed there. After the senators announced their bill, the collective response from the space community was initially shock. This was soon followed by: why? And so I've spoken with several people on background, both from the political and space spheres, to get a sense of what is really happening here. The short answer is that it is all political, and the timing is due to the reelection campaign for Cornyn, who faces a stiff runoff against Ken Paxton. Paxton is the attorney general of Texas. In 2020, several high-level assistants in his office accused Paxton of "bribery, abuse of office, and other crimes." Late,r the Republican-dominated Texas House impeached him by a vote of 121–23. However, after the 2020 presidential election, Paxton led the way in filing lawsuits that sought to overturn the results. So the MAGA base loves him. Cornyn, therefore, may well lose the runoff. NASA wants no part of this Here's what we know about the legislation, which is, in DC parlance, a "messaging bill." Cornyn is behind this, and Cruz simply agreed to go along. The goal in Cornyn's campaign is to use the bill as a way to show Texans that he is fighting for them in Washington, DC, against the evils there. Presumably, he will blame the Obama administration, even though it is quite clear in hindsight that there were no political machinations behind the decision to not award a space shuttle to Houston. Space Center Houston, which would be responsible for hosting the shuttle, was not even told before the legislation was filed. NASA, too, is not a willing party. The space agency does not want to have to find retirees who worked on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft decades ago to work to try to refurbish one of them. The most flight-ready aircraft of the two had its orbiter attachments removed, needs new engines, and would have to be recertified to return to flight. "We don't want any part of this," one NASA official told Ars. It seems unlikely that this is a punitive bill toward the Smithsonian. It just happens that, according to Cornyn's office, Discovery is the only shuttle still "owned" by the federal government, and therefore eligible to be transported. The bottom line is that two Texas senators want taxpayers to spend at least $1 billion to remove the most historic Space Shuttle from the most historic spaceflight museum in the world, possibly break it in an across-the-country move, and then put it in a nondescript warehouse in Houston. I am a huge space buff who lives just a few minutes away from Space Center Houston. Even I can recognize this for the colossally stupid idea that it is. Eric Berger Senior Space Editor Eric Berger Senior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 23 Comments