White House site has shutte petition

DAYTON, Ohio (Dayton Business Journal) - The effort to wrangle a Space Shuttle for Dayton has made its way to The White House Web site.

A petition asking the Obama Administration to revisit its decision on the final display sites for the shuttles — New York, Washington D.C., Florida and Los Angeles — went on the site last week and has garnered nearly 200 signatures.

Click here to see the petition.

The petition says NASA Administrator Charles Bolden’s decision was based on a flawed assessment of applications and that NASA also ignored the intent of Congress to consider regional diversity when determining shuttle locations.

“Even more insulting to taxpayers is that having paid to build the shuttles, they will now be charged to see them at some sites. New York, which received the decommissioned Enterprise space shuttle under the premise that it would house it in the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, now plans to build a separate museum for the Enterprise,” the petition said.

NASA gave Dayton the shaft in April when it placed retired shuttles at the four other sites, leaving out the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The White House recently launched “We the People,” a place for Americans to submit petitions to the administration. Petitions must get a minimum of 150 signatures before they can be placed on the site.