For Sale Cheap: Used Space Shuttles

William Atkins
Monday, 18 January 2010 21:45

Science - Space

NASA has made a bargain basement offer to sell at least two slightly used but in good shape space shuttles for a price that seems—what should I say?—out of this world!


The U.S. space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, doesn’t want the space shuttles to lie around taking up space and getting dusty.

So they’re up for sale at $28.8 million each, which is down drastically from $42 million offered originally.

The remaining U.S. space shuttles are Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour, and Enterprise (although it has never flown in space).

The space shuttle Discovery is already headed to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, but the other two (Endeavour and Atlantis) are definitely up for sale.

Since it hasn't flown in space, only partially through Earth's atmosphere, the space shuttle Enterprise may also be put on the auction block—maybe at an even cheaper price?



Photograph: The space shuttle Endeavour is piggybacked on top of a specially modified Boeing 747 aircraft as it sits on the runway at Ellington Air Field, which is located just north of the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Clear Lake City, Texas (Houston).

After completing its mission with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California, the shuttle is laying over on its way to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 1991 photograph was taken by William Atkins.

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