FlightLines

Want to lease a space shuttle launch pad?

You'll recognize the two billionaires waging a political war over who gets to use an old space shuttle launch pad on the Florida coast.

Bloomberg and others are reporting that PayPal and Tesla Motors mogul Elon Musk's SpaceX company originally wanted exclusive rights to launch pad 39A, which NASA intends to lease to a commercial space interest because it can't afford the $1.2 million upkeep on an unused launch pad.

Enter Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon mogul who just bought The Washington Post. Blue Origin wants to lease the launch complex as a multi-use operation instead of just to one company exclusively. SpaceX said it would welcome others using the launch pad, including NASA, but that doesn't clear up who might end up holding the lease.

Internet pioneers and billionaires: SpaceX's Elon Musk (left) and Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos

Both are working to commercialize space travel, which will inevitably bring the price down. They're serious too. SpaceX has already made a successful cargo run to the International Space Station.

Space News is reporting that NASA hoped to have the pad leased to someone by the end of September (yesterday), but lobbyists have been hired, and Blue Origin filed a protest with the GAO, so who knows what will happen now.

Florida's congressional delegation is pretty much saying (paraphrased), "If Nasa can put a man on the moon and run the space shuttle program for 30 years, they likely don't need our help to decide what to do with a launch pad."

Probably not, but the stakes are huge for the company that gets the launch pad lease and for Florida because of the business that would come from the U.S. government and commercial interests that need to get in to space without a space shuttle.

Read the Bloomberg story here.

Read the Space News story here.

Watch SpaceX's Dragon deliver the goods to the ISS here.

Check out satellite image of the complex on Google maps below.

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Boeing helps Houston solve a 'space' problem

For decades, two 747s ferried space shuttles across the country, from Edwards Air Force Base in California to Cape Canaveral, Fla., when the space shuttle couldn't land on the Atlantic Coast. The iconic image of a space shuttle riding piggy back on the modified Boeing commercial airliner was one of the first public images America and the world had of the program.

Millions of kids (you know who we are) assembled model kits of the first space shuttle, the Enterprise, which was used to test the piggyback idea and other space shuttle R&D. Enterprise, which never flew in space but was allowed to "lift off" from the 747 and land, can today be seen at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York.

Now The Boeing Co. is going to take apart and reassemble one of the 747s, known as Nasa 905, to be part of a gigantic display and interpretive center in a $12 million exhibit at Space Center Houston, (click for bigger image of an artistic rendering above) which serves as the visitor center for Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston, reports collectSpace, an online space history website. Nasa transferred ownership of the jumbo jet to Space Center Houston in May.

"Boeing was involved in every stage of the space shuttle program, which encompassed the ferried flights of NASA's orbiters across America for more than 35 years," stated John Elbon, Boeing vice president and general manager of space exploration. "Now we have an opportunity to extend that contribution, while upholding one of our strongest corporate commitments — to inspire the next-generation workforce."

Read the entire story with photos and diagrams online.