Intrepid Museum Requests $40 Million in Public Funds to Help House Its Space Shuttle

At last we left the controversy surrounding NASA‘s decision to give one of its few Space Shuttles to New York’s Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, the institution itself was under fire for possibly not being as prepared to receive the craft as they’d original told the space agency, and other states who hadn’t received one were vying to snag it away. Cut to a few weeks later and NASA hasn’t yet appeared to budge on their original plans, but the Intrepid now seems in the process of trying to get all of its ducks in a row; ducks of the financial sort (this writer is still a bit jet lagged, so please forgive that last sentence). The NY Times reports that the museum has requested $40 million in public financing to help it build a new facility to help house the Enterprise shuttle. Saying that building the new structure and having the shuttle in New York would help foster both jobs and education, the paper writes that the public’s $40 million will be a necessary chunk of the $85 million in total it needs to complete the entire project. Granted, they still also need permission from the Department of Transportation, which owns the vacant lot they want to put the new building on, so all of this news doesn’t seems so much a big step forward as it does a somewhat necessary admittance of trying to move in that direction. Now it’s up to New York officials to authorize the funds (and for those other states to call off their dogs).