http://www.click2houston.com/news/27516647/detail.html#
Pure politics of the lousiest kind. Houston should have been designated the first place to get a shuttle and everyone else could fight over the other two.
What the fuck did the California Science Center do to get a shuttle? Nothing except grease pockets is all I can see. Greedy bastard politicians.
I thought Houston would be a lock as well. I think the New York one should be eliminated - it’s hard to justify having two so close together, and none on the west coast.
The article mentioned that this was due to politics. The OP said this was due to politics. What are the politics?
I’m very surprised the Museum of Flight in Seattle didn’t get one. Didn’t they build a structure specifically for a shuttle?
A hangar? We’ve got one of those in Indianapolis.
Not only is Houston not getting a shuttle, the flight simulator used to train astronauts for shuttle flights, now in Houston at the Johnson Space Center, is comming to Chicago.
http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/No-space-shuttle-for-Chicago-s-Adler-Planetarium-1333231.php
They seem to have gone to a bit more trouble than that.
Hope they had a plan B for that space.
Now that I think of it, I’m surprised Wright Patterson didn’t make the cut either.
Why is this in the Pit? The topic doesn’t seem to be very controversial. I really doubt a flamefest is going to break out in the thread…
Cool. I built a very small part of those simulators, so now I’m going to have to go to Chicago to see if my part is there. And I wonder who is getting the toilet simulator.
Damn, no shuttle in Chicago. 
I hate to point out the obvious in saying that the logic used in the OP is a little twisted. The logic is that Houston should get a shuttle because Houston has been very important to space missions housing mission control and already having a museum with a Saturn V rocket on display and all that. That sounds good until you ask how Houston got all that stuff to begin with. The answer is that is was a political favor on a much larger scale than any of this. Talk about entitlement!!!
Let some other part of the country have something related to space for God’s sake. Houston, Florida, and Ala-fuckin’-Bama already took most of the important stuff.
Very cool! Can you tell us which part you built?
PLEASE tell me there really IS a toilet simulator. 
Minor nitpick, but Houston should have been the second place to get a shuttle after Kennedy Space Center. Everybody else should have had to fight over the other one.
Why? Both Kennedy and the Smithsonian seem to me to have more of a claim than Houston, especially since both of them can incorporate into major preexisting tourist attractions (the first of which makes money). After that, I’d put one on the west coast for balance, and then let the rest duke it out.
Houston certainly has a claim, but it’s not like they’re the one and only place.
Well, since this IS the pit and I am already going to hell a dozen times over I will point out Texas already has the Columbia.
So its politics eh? So, remind me again why the control bases are in Houston again? Oh, right, the VP at the time was the influential Lyndon Johnson and NASA had to pander to him to get funding.
Politics you say?
Well, the orbiters were actually BUILT in Southern California, so it’s kind of appropriate that at least one should come back home to stay.
Experimental aircraft and spacecraft were designed, constructed, and tested on the West Coast for decades before LBJ decided to shovel a little pork to Texas. What conceivable reason was there for sticking Mission Control in Houston besides politics?
Maybe the corrosive salt air and hurricanes?
Not to mention that Edwards AFB was the landing site of like one third of the missions.
What a stupid fucking OP.
Well, McMinnville didn’t get the Shuttle, but they are opening up a bitching Waterpark this summer!