Today is a big day for the museum campus as the Adler Planetarium learns whether or not it will be receiving one of the soon to be retired space shuttles. We posted about this story a couple of weeks ago and it seems like there is a good chance we could get one. The Trib has a good article summing up the competition, but what we found most interesting was the plan on how they would get the shuttle to the museum:
Update: So much for that. Chicago lost to Washington D.C., NYC, LA and Orlando. Above we said "it seems like there is a good chance we could get one". Apparently we're not very good at handicapping competitions to bring space shuttles to cities. Sorry.The shuttles will be delivered atop a Boeing 747 transporter. If the delivery were made to O'Hare International Airport, the problem would be how to get the shuttle to Adler's lakefront campus. So Adler has identified three other airports near Lake Michigan that have runways long enough for the plane to land, and from which the shuttle could be delivered to Adler aboard a barge, Knappenberger said.
NASA wants to deliver all four shuttles no later than September 2012, Knappenberger said. Adler would either store the shuttle in an airport hangar or build a temporary hangar at the old Meigs Field until completion of its permanent home, which would be built atop a parking lot next to the museum.
