Space Shuttle Carrier 747 To Be Displayed In Houston

Above, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft parked at Edwards Air Force Base in 1977. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Thanks to Barack Obama, another piece of NASA history will be consigned to being a museum piece as the U.S. manned space program is systematically being dismantled.

According to Canada.com:

HOUSTON — Another piece of history tied to the now retired space shuttle fleet is making its last journey. 

A convoy of giant flatbed trailers slowly began a 13-kilometre trip Monday carrying the biggest disassembled pieces of the old 747 jumbo jet that flew shuttles on cross-country trips for decades. 

Known as the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, or SCA, it will be put back together, topped with a shuttle replica about 18 metres off the ground and become a museum piece scheduled to be shown next year just outside NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where centre director Ellen Ochoa will see it from her office window.

I first saw this 747 jet in 1977 parked at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. Then, on July 4, 1982, I saw it again as it ferried shuttle Challenger over the crowd that attended the landing of Columbia earlier. I was one of 500,000 people at that landing.

Above, Challenger flies over the just-landed Columbia in  July 1982. .

The article states that there were two Shuttle Carrier Aircraft 747s:

NASA had two of the 747s, known by their tail numbers 905 and 911. The now Houston-based plane was NASA 905 and the first to get the distinctive struts protruding from its fuselage that served as mounts for the shuttle. 

The former American Airlines passenger jet was obtained by NASA in 1974, was renovated and was used first on test flights with shuttle prototype Enterprise.

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